Tag Archives for answer

Friday mystery object #86 answer

On Friday I gave you this fluid preserved specimen to identify:

I probably made this one a bit harder than I could have, by not giving you a photo from the other side, but then that would have made it too easy:

It seems that Neil was the only person who may have correctly identified this specimen, as hinted in this comment:

Knowing it’s an embryo give me some idea (possibly incorrect) of the orientation: tail and hind-limbs at top, trunk, then forelimbs at lower left and the head, unhelpfully facing away from us, at lower right. It would then appear to be a quadrapedal tetrapod, probably (?) a mammal. Based on the apparent shape of the feet and possibly the hint of an ear I’m going to say …

This is of course assuming that Neil deliberately chose the word ‘trunk’ to indicate that he had worked out that this is the embryo of an  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #85 answer

On Friday I was at the Natural Science Collections Association conference in Newcastle, which was a very enjoyable couple of days spent with other natural scientists discussing issues relating to natural history collections. The downside was that I wasn’t really able to respond to comments particularly well.

However, it turns out that you didn’t really need my input, since there were some great clues by other commentators, that helped with the identification of this object:

Jake spotted that it was the nasal cavities and teeth (the premaxilla and part of the maxilla) of a marine mammal and Jonpaulkaiser identified that it belonged to a  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #84 answer

On Friday I gave you this piece of skull to identify:

It was in the Horniman collections with no identification beyond a pencil note saying ‘Monkey?’, but that seemed to be a  bit of an odd suggestion, since primates have very rounded braincases – even the longer skulled ones like baboons. I think the person who made the tentative identification had got the section the wrong way round – thinking that the nuchal crest was a part of a brow-ridge or something – a mistake that Jake certainly didn’t make. They also missed what several of you spotted – the rugose (sort of wrinkly) structure that supported the olfactory epithelium (the inner back part of the nose where the receptors for smell are located).

What most of you did miss however, was the lack of fusion of the cranial sutures, which indicates that this was from a juvenile animal. As a result it is smaller and has far less well-developed muscle scars than an adult animal would have. A faint muscle scar can be seen converging on what looks like the beginnings of a sagittal crest (as pointed out by Manabu Sakamoto), so it seems reasonable to guess that the adult animal would have a reasonably well developed crest on the top of the braincase.

Eventually Neil dropped a couple of hints that showed he knew what it was and David Craven and KateKatV also suggested that they knew that it was part of the braincase of a juvenile  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #83 answer

I apologise in advance for providing a slightly short answer to this week’s mystery object – I found myself a bit strapped for time between responding to Intelligent Design types trolling my blog here and at Scientopia, writing a talk for Skeptics In the Pub tomorrow evening and trying to sort out my laptop power lead after it broke (now fixed thanks to the helpful staff at Maplins who gave me the parts I needed to make repairs).

On Friday I gave you this object to identify, thinking that it might be a fun challenge:

As it turns out it seems to have been a good one, since most of you managed to work out what it’s from. There were some great hints dropped and I think that the comments proved to be a useful resource for those who weren’t sure, but they didn’t detract too much from the fun of working it out. Thanks to everyone for being awesome!

The first to correctly identify both the type of bone and the species it came from was Cromercrox, who gave a great rationale for his suggestion: Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #82 answer

Apologies for the late posting of this answer – I was travelling back from Ireland yesterday and didn’t manage to get this post anywhere near as complete as I was hoping.

On Friday I gave you this mystery object to identify:

Pretty much everyone recognised it as being the skull of a dog or dog-like animal, but the large size of this skull (27cm long) caused some confusion. Quite a variety of breeds were suggested, but Rachel, Jamie Revell and Jake all ended up going for it being a   Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #81 answer

On Friday I gave you this object to identify:

I thought it would prove quite straightforward for my astute audience and I was not disappointed. As usual Jake was the first to comment and he was spot on when he said:

I think it is some sort of big bird, it’s the braincase and […] the ear

The big bird Jake suggested was an Emu, which was slightly off as was CopilasDenis‘ suggestion of Cassowary and Cromercrox‘ suggestion of Rhea (although they all correctly spotted that this piece of skull was from a ratite). But Dave Godfrey finally picked the last remaining living ratite and the correct answer when he suggested it was  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #80 answer

On Friday I gave you this sectioned bit of a critter as the mystery object:

A slightly trickier one than usual, so I wasn’t surprised at the range of suggestions – ranging from a vertebra to a Narwhal tusk. Jack Ashby got in first with a tentative stab at the right answer when he said ‘sawfish maybe?‘ a suggestion supported by Carlos Grau. It is indeed part of the rostrum (beak or nose) of a  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #79 answer

On Friday I gave you this anthropological mystery object to identify, asking you to tell me what it is, where it’s from and what it’s made of:

Well, OdenedO worked out that it is a skirt (or apron) and Sam Kelly and Julie Doyle both correctly suggested that it was African in origin. Jake and Julie Doyle suggested that it could be ivory and Sam Kelly specified that it could be Hippopotamus teeth (although this suggestion was discarded in favour of horn).

So a bit of a group effort, but you pretty much got there – it’s an African (Ethiopian in fact) skirt/apron made using ivory, probably Hippopotamus incisors. That’s my current preferred hypothesis based on the photo – but I need to check the specimen myself to be entirely sure.

Ivory (teeth as a workable material) is an interesting area for us in the museum trade, since most kinds are controlled by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). This means that objects made of certain types of ivory need to have licenses for import and export, or for any commercial use, unless they can be shown to have been made before 1st June 1947.

There are various characteristics that can help identify different ivories – the best known being the presence of Schreger lines in Elephant ivory:

But there are other clues that can indicate which species an ivory has come from – unfortunately I don’t have time or the appropriate images to go into detail here, so I will pull together a post on identifying ivory as soon as I can. For now, here’s a link to a useful pdf article on this very topic.

Back to the skirt/apron – anthropology isn’t my area of expertise, but to the best of my knowledge this sort of attire is largely an indicator of status rather than a practical piece of clothing. In other African cultures beaded aprons are given to young women when they marry, so this may fulfil a similar purpose. I will try to track down some more on this – I think it may be included in one of the Horniman’s planned exhibitions in the next couple of years, so there may be a lot more information forthcoming. I’ll keep you posted.

Friday mystery object #76 answer

Happy New Year!

On Friday I gave you these two bones to compare, asking whether you thought they were from the same species.

There were some excellent responses with useful observations reflecting some of the difficulties faced when trying to identify postcrania. Unlike skulls which are composed of several bones forming a composite structure, including highly diagnostic elements (teeth for example), postcrania tend to be a bit more limited in the number of diagnostic characters visible. That said, the shape of the articulation points, the grooves and crests from tendons and ligaments, the scars from muscle attachments and the holes from nerves and blood vessels can all provide clues as to what a bone belonged to.

Size can also provide a clue, but as pointed out by Debi Linton:

…there’s a size differential, that could nevertheless be intraspecific variation…

This is a valid point – size can vary within a species for all sorts of reasons, the most obvious being the age or sex of the animal. However, in this instance the size difference is accompanied by quite a substantial set of differences in shape that go beyond what you would expect to find within a species. So well done to Dave Godfrey, Jamie Revell and Jake for making that deductive leap! That said, Debi also deserves congratulations for identifying the differences and then exercising caution in the light of insufficient information – it may be unsatisfying to say I’m not sure, but it’s often the only truly correct answer available.

That said, I’m a little surprised that nobody worked out what these femurs were from. The bottom one (B) has a small area of damage on the proximal end (the end nearest the body), which shows a honey-comb structure in the bone beneath. Jake also spotted that the angle at which these femurs would articulate with the hip would be unlike a deer – or other mammal in fact. These are the femurs of two species of bird – very big birds for that.

Any idea which species?

Friday mystery object #75 answer

I hope everyone had an enjoyable Yuletide! On Christmas Eve I gave you this somewhat unseasonable object to identify:

Not quite as easy as I was expecting in the end, but a couple of you spotted that this is indeed the tail of an  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #74 answer

On Friday I gave you another bird skull to identify:

As expected, the regulars immediately waded in with correct identifications to the group, based on the scars from the salt glands on top of the head, bill shape (including the groove running from the nostril) and the size of the specimen no doubt. So congratulations go to Dave Hone, Jake, jonpaulkaiser, KateV, cromercrox, David Craven, Matt King and Curianth (everyone who commented in fact) – you were all correct in suggesting that this is the skull of an  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #73 answer

On Friday I gave you this skull to identify:

It obviously belonged to a bird, but what kind? If you look at the top image you’ll see two deep scars on top of the head above the eyesockets – these are the areas where salt glands were located when the animal was alive. This is the first thing I look for when I have a bird skull to identify, because they tell you whether the bird was marine.

I’ll explain – marine birds don’t have regular access to fresh water and they need a way to remove excess salts from their system, which is what the salt glands are for. Generally, the bigger and deeper the scars for the salt gland, the more marine the bird is in its habitat, so clearly this bird spent an awful lot of time at sea.

There are plenty of marine birds out there, but only a few have such well-developed salt glands and even fewer have such a distinctive bill shape – just look at that mandible. This is of course a  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #72 answer

On Friday I gave you this rather snug looking object to identify, asking where does it come from and what is it made of?

Suggestions ranged from Beaver fur from North America to Yak fur from Bhutan. However, a number of you managed to get it right – it is in fact a  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #71 answer

Part the first:

On Thursday I accidentally posted the Friday mystery object for a few moments and in that tiny window of opportunity SmallCasserole managed to correctly identify this organism:

As soon as it was posted properly this object also proved no challenge to several of the other regulars, with David Hone, CopilasDenis, David Craven and Dave Godfrey all spotting that it was a graptolite. Moreover, David Craven managed to correctly identify the species as  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #70 answer

On Friday I gave you this skull to identify:

I deliberately didn’t provide a scale bar, partly because I wanted to demonstrate how important it can be to have a sense of scale when identifying a specimen and partly to make the specimen a bit more challenging to identify.

Nonetheless, most of you got a correct identification, with some very good subtle hints being used to communicate that fact. So well done to Jack Ashby, David Craven, CopilasDenis, Dave Godfrey and Manabu Sakomoto, who all hinted or explicitly stated that this was the skull of a  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #69 answer

On Friday I gave you an odd-looking skull to identify:

The fact it’s so odd-looking made it a pretty easy one to identify for most of you, with Cromercrox being the first to get the general identification, citing the very distinctive teeth as the characteristic that gave it away and Dave Godfrey getting the identification to species level.

Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #68 answer

On Friday I gave you this object to identify:

It’s one of my own specimens, found in 1997 and prepared using the simple method of suspending the body from a tree in a bucket with small holes drilled in the bottom to allow rainwater to drain. The specimen could have been bleached with a mild hydrogen peroxide solution, but the original intention was for it to provide an indication of the bone damage that may suggest insect activity, so I didn’t want to risk causing any additional chemical damage.

Everyone was on the right track with their suggestions – the hooked bill and large orbits making it clear that this was a predatory bird, with most people correctly opting for some kind of owl. However, Jake managed to get the species right in no time by using specimens from his own collection to inform his identification of  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #67 answer

On Friday I gave you this object to identify:

As I suspected, you all worked out that it is the skull of a turtle, so well done all and particularly Jake, who got there first.

Turtle skulls are quite characteristic, in that they have a bill with no teeth and they have no openings apart from the obvious ones like the eye sockets and nose. Most other tetrapods have several openings in their skulls, something that is diagnostic for, and sometime provides the name for, major groups like the main ‘reptile’ group the Diapsida. This name that means two arches, which is a reference to two additional openings present in the skulls of this lineage (which includes the lizards, snakes, crocodiles and dinosaurs – including the birds). Turtles and tortoises are members of the Anapsida, which means without arches.

The characteristics of this skull are those of an Anapsid and the streamlined shape and quite large size (despite it being a youngish adult, as indicated by the unfused sutures) suggests that it is a sea-turtle. There are only 7 species of sea-turtle and the comments provide an example of features that can be used to distinguish this as a  Continue reading →