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
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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.
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
Friday mystery object #66 answer
On Friday I gave you this mystery object:
I thought it would be too easy, but I hadn’t factored in that it is the skull of a juvenile, which makes it much harder to identify from just a photograph. I did drop a few hints about what it might be on Twitter when I said it was ‘easy as pie’ and I had a hard time restraining myself from making a give-away comment about it flying when Jake asked if it was a big bat.
Manabu Sakamoto spotted that it was a juvenile and that the canine-like teeth were quite distinctive of a particular group. Neil managed to convey that he knew the answer with a beautifully subtle comment:
After rooting around a bit I think that I have sussed out the answer.
The answer being Continue reading
Friday mystery object #65 answer
On Friday I gave you this bit of geology to identify:
I used this because I had it to hand on Thursday afternoon after doing a behind the scenes tour of the Horniman’s store for some of the attendees of TAM London. I also used it so I would have the chance to tell the story behind this innocuous looking, if pretty, bit of stone.
Before I get started on the story I must congratulate Steven D. Garber, PhD on spotting that one of the main components of this is serpentine (the other being calcite) and I have to hand a big dose of kudos to Dave Godfrey who got the answer spot-on when he suggested that this was a sample of Continue reading
Friday mystery object #64 answer
On Friday I gave you this anthropological object to identify (courtesy of the helpful staff and volunteers at the Horniman’s Study Collections Centre):
I asked you where it was from, what it was for and what it was made from. The first two questions were correctly answered quite quickly – Manabu Sakamoto correctly identified the seal on the side of the vessel as Chinese and Wildaker worked out that it was for holding tea (in leaf form I hasten to add). So, it’s a Chinese tea-caddy.
However, what it was made from was a much trickier issue. Suggestions ranged from Ostrich leather (by Prancing Papio) to knitted silk (by Wildaker). Zigg recognised that it was compressed into shape and that it was plant based, and ObenedO suggested it was made from rice or mushrooms, but nobody (except Melissa, my lovely wife) correctly recognised it as being made from Continue reading
Friday mystery object #63 answer
On Friday I gave you this weird-looking object to identify:
Steven D. Garber, PhD jumped straight in with the correct identification of what it is – the sternum keel and trachea of a bird. The more tricky part was working out what bird it came from. Dave Godfrey suggested that it was a large bird, possibly a gull, while Zinjanthropus suggested that it might have belonged to a Trumpeter Swan, with support from Carlos Grau (who suggested it could also have been from a pelican). Jonpaulkaiser proposed that it came from a penguin, a suggestion seconded by Dave Godfrey on the basis of the shape.
So the identification became divided between the swan camp and the penguin camp. Jake joined the swan camp (bringing Zigg with him) and provided a link to a great piece by Darren Naish on his Tetrapod Zoology blog, which focussed on the bizarre tracheae (and sterna) of some birds – including swans, which related to the observation by Zinjanthropus:
Is it a trumpeter swan? They have large, convoluted trachea that goes through the sternal keel so that it can act as a resonating chamber.
It turns out that the swan camp had the right of it, this sternum and trachea did in fact belong to a Continue reading
Friday mystery object #62 answer
On Friday I gave you this specimen and left you to work out what it was by yourselves (for which I humbly apologise):
There were some great observations from the outset – Jake immediately spotted that it had strong jaws and looks like a carnivore and Manabu Sakamoto went on to explain the biomechanical reason for the strong jaws and recognised that it’s a marine mammal. Jake came close when he said that it’s something similar to a Leopard Seal and jonpaulkaiser came even closer with the suggestion of California Sea Lion. Neil subtly hinted that it might be a Stellar’s Sea Lion, but Zigg managed to work out that it is in fact the skull of a Continue reading
Friday mystery object #61 answer
On Friday I gave you a bit of a respite from skulls, in the form of this rather beautiful object:
I asked you what it was made from and what function it might serve.
Dave Godfrey immediately recognised that the two halves of this egg-shaped object fold down and likely contained something inside. What the two halves were made from was hinted at by Raymond Ho and Steven D. Garber, PhD (who recognised that it was derived from molluscs) and was explicitly identified by by Dave Godfrey as being mother-of-pearl (or nacre as it’s also known). Jonpaulkaiser went a step further and identified that the nacre came from the shells of Continue reading
Friday mystery object #60 answer
On Friday I gave you this skull to identify from box NH.83.1:
Unfortunately I’ve not been able to respond to comments and this answer is a little late (and short) because I’ve been at a wedding in Ireland (for anyone who knows what this entails you will understand…). I will take the time to respond to comments and elaborate on answers when I get back home and have managed to get more than a couple of hours sleep.
For now I will say that Steven D. Garber, PhD suggested that this was a petrel skull, probably for the reason posited by Cromercrox – it has a tube nose and is therefore from the Order Procellariiformes. David Craven noticed that the skull is too small for an albatross and the beak is too broad at the base to belong to a storm-petrel – both being excellent observations, but the concluding suggestion of something from the Pterodroma was slightly out – they’re a bit too big. A-M (via KateV) and Prancing Papio, FCD also went for species that are a bit too big, but Rachel managed to get something the right size and shape (and distribution working with SmallCasserole’s observation about the other specimens from the same collection). She suggested Continue reading
Friday mystery object #59 answer
On Friday I gave you this mystery object dragged from the cold, dead grasp of my old camera:
It was immediately identified as an ‘insectivore’ of some sort – which narrowed it down slightly. Although ‘insectivore’ doesn’t have quite the same meaning as it used to.
Once the Insectivora was a bit of a waste-basket taxonomic group that included a wide range of small insectivorous mammals, including moles, golden moles, hedgehogs, shrews, tree shrews, elephant shrews, tenrecs, colugos and solenodons. However, the group was fragmented on the basis of molecular studies and now the Insectivora no longer exists as a taxonomic group.
Despite this taxonomic shake-up the use of ‘insectivore’ still works as a descriptive term for the numerous small invertebrate eating mammals out there. Of which this is one.
But which?
The moles were ruled out straight away by Dave Godfrey, then the hedgehogs were ruled out by cromercrox, before Prancing Papio slammed in with the correct identification of Continue reading
Friday mystery object #58 answer
On Friday I gave you this skull as a mystery object, dredged as it was from the memory card of my severely concussed camera:
This was a slightly sneaky object, because I had a feeling that quite a few of you would make the same mistake as I did when I first saw this skull, by assuming that it’s from a large rodent. The large front teeth (the incisors) support this, since enlarged first incisors are a feature of the rodents.
Rodents also have a large gap behind those incisors called a ‘diastema’ – which this skull has for the lower jaw (or mandible), but you may notice that the upper jaw has three incisors in the pre-maxilla (that’s bone in the front bit of the upper jaw) before the diastema. This is easier to see in a side (or lateral) view:
You might notice that there’s a small tooth behind the third incisor in the upper jaw – that’s a canine. You might also notice the faint wiggly line in the bone of the jaw just above the canine – that’s the junction (or suture) between the maxilla and the pre-maxilla bones. The canine is the first tooth in the maxilla and all the incisors are in the pre-maxilla (this is the same for all mammal teeth).
Rodents only have two teeth in the pre-maxilla, not six. They also have no canine teeth in the maxilla. That means this mystery object cannot be a rodent. Here’s what a rodent’s diastema looks like (the suture between maxilla and pre-maxilla is really clear in this photo):
Lagomorphs (rabbits and hares) have teeth similar to rodents, except they have an extra pair of incisors behind the front pair in the maxilla – these are called ‘peg teeth’:
Peg-teeth in a Rabbit skull
Clearly the mystery object has more incisors than this, plus those canines, so it can’t be a lagomorph either.
So what beastie has six upper and two lower incisors? Several of you worked out that this was a marsupial from the dentition (namely Cromercrox, jonpaulkaiser, David Craven and Zigg), but only Prancing Papio and Jamie Revell managed to get it to species, namely the Continue reading
Friday mystery object #57 answer
On Friday I gave you a specimen that I had to identify myself earlier in the week:
The first steps of this identification are quite straight-forward – in the words of Jake it “Looks a bit sheepy and a bit deery” which pins this firmly in the order Bovidae. Dave Godfrey neatly summarised what makes it look sheepy and deery – “Diastema, lack of upper incisors, and the shape of the teeth“. Rob went a step further and ruled out deer, sheep, goats and camelids – coming to the conclusion that this is an African bovid of some kind. Then David Craven blasted through the narrowing-down process and hit upon the same species as I had concluded it was, namely a Continue reading
Friday mystery object #56 answer
On Friday I gave you this object to identify:
I must admit that I thought it would be a tricky one, but I was surprised by the number of correct answers that came in, with the first by Prancing Papio who immediately got it to species. Neil made a subtle comment (“Looks like it could go both ways“) that almost passed me by, but which indicated that he knew which group this skull belonged to (see below for elucidation), whilst David Craven and Jamie Revell both pinned it down to species as well. That identification was Continue reading
