Last Friday’s mystery object was this formidable looking lower jaw chosen by my volunteer Cat:
I asked you to tell me what this was from and you haven’t disappointed! Cromercrox led the charge by deftly discounting it as being from a tetrapod – and even after an attempt at obfuscation on my part he identified that it was from “some mutha of a fish”. Jack Ashby jumped in with the correct suggestion that it was from a perciform fish and Jim slammed home with the correct answer of Continue reading
Friday’s mystery object was a tricky one:
Suggestions for an identification ranged from earwax to fungi, from a monstrous gall stone to diseased bone. The first ranging shot from Gimpy (It looks like bone that has been calcified or has some sort of tumour growing on it. It also seems to have … no internal blood vessels or marrow) was actually very close and I thought this would be nailed in short order, but perhaps my evasive answer put people off the scent more effectively than I had intended. Eventually the one person who has managed to guess all of the correct elements is Jake – so a hearty round of applause to our youngest contributor! It is in fact a section of Continue reading
The mystery object on Friday was chosen by Taylor, a work experience student who assisted me in the collections last week. He picked a particularly tricky specimen:
However, I am pleased to say that Jake immediately spotted that it was a skull that had been sectioned and after some questions and some close guesstimates by Henry Gee (who was working through the various families within the Carnivora), it was eventually correctly identified by Jeremy, who worked out that it was in fact from a Continue reading
On Friday Dr David Waterhouse presented a guest mystery object from a beach on the Norfolk coast near Cromer:
There were some interesting ideas about what it might be, ranging from oil-spill residue (Gimpy) to shark egg-case (SmallCasserole), but Henry Gee managed to correctly identify the specimen as being a Continue reading
On Friday I showed you a photo of one of my house guests from last year and asked you what it was:
Body approx. 2cm long
Obviously it’s a spider; the eight legs, two body segments and massive chelicera are a dead give-away, but what kind of spider is it? Jim identified it immediately (typical of a know-it-all biologist) as a Continue reading
On Friday I gave you this tricky mystery object to identify:
It presented quite a challenge for everyone, but eventually Dave Godfrey managed to get the correct identification. Believe it or not, this is part of the skull of a Continue reading
On Friday I presented you with this mystery object:
This specimen is one of 14 of the same species that we have in the Study Collections Centre at the Horniman Museum. Myself and a collegue (Steve, king of knots) recently remounted all of our trophy plates on steel mesh, using steel S-hooks, plastazote foam and archival tape restraints and supports. The outcome has been very satifactory:
Unfortunately, most of these specimens have been donated from private collections where the information has not been retained with the specimen, so I have had to identify pretty much all of these trophies. The one I showed you on Friday is most likely to be a Continue reading
On Friday I gave you this scrawny looking bird to identify:
The beak (and feet) gave away that it is a parrot (or psittaciform as the parrots are known to ornithologists and the taxonomically minded), which was immediately recognised by SmallCasserole shortly followed by Debi Linton. SmallCasserole suggested “parakeet” which I suppose could be accepted as a correct identification since they are called “parakeets” by Americans, but it took Jim to identify it more specifically – it is of course a Continue reading
Last Friday’s mystery object was this:
This roughly spherical object represents my most frequently occurring enquiry at the Horniman Museum – people find these all the time and they are always convinced that they are something extraordinary. It is of course a Continue reading
It seems that the change of tack on the mystery object was a welcome variation – record views and far more comments than usual as everybody strove to find the answer. Given that favourable response I will try to include a more diverse theme for the choice of Friday mystery objects in future!
Here is the object in question:
You were also given a couple of detail images and asked to work out a) what is it, b) what animal bits it’s made from and c) where it’s from. I thought this would be fairly easy, which is why I didn’t include the photo below, which would probably have given the game away immediately:
Clearly this is a Continue reading
On Friday I presented you with this skull for identification:
Quick as a flash SmallCasserole had it identified and discussed and not long afterwards Jake also managed to identify it as belonging to a Continue reading
I hope you all had an enjoyable Christmas, apologies for the late posting of the answer to Christmas Friday’s mystery object, but better late than never. I must admit that this was a bit of a cheat, because I have posted one of these before, but this time it had antlers and it was gift wrapped:
Without antlers it proved tricky before, but this time only a few of you got to see it at all (I assume due to Christmas). Jim is the only one to have identified it this time, although KateKatV took this opportunity to remind me about a bit of silly season science from a few years ago – something that might merit a blogpost all to itself…
With no further ado, here is the unwrapped object:
This is a Continue reading
On Friday I presented you with a mystery object that I recently had to identify myself:
Skull length approx 30cm
The upward facing alveolus (tooth socket) for the upper canines is a dead give-away that this a Continue reading
On Friday I showed you this beauty:
I posed three questions about this huge snail to tax your minds: what is it, what does it eat and do you think it can fit into its shell? As usual, SmallCasserole and Jim were the first ones there – although not without some clues. This is a Continue reading
On Friday I gave you two pictures of a specimen from the Horniman Museum and asked you what it was:
Some good answers popped up but three of you managed to identify it as a Continue reading
On Friday I presented you with this delightful looking creature’s skull:
Total length 2.5cm
and asked you what it was. SmallCasserole and Jim vied to reach the correct answer, with the physicist narrowly beating the biologist to the solution using brute force of reasoning (rather than attempting a comparative approach). However, Jim did step up and suggest a more specific answer – which despite some research over the weekend I am still not able to confirm. I need access to some more comparative material.
We know it is a Continue reading
Happy Monday one and all! Last Friday was a busy day for me as it was the day of the prize-giving event for the winners of the photographic competition that was part of the series of Darwin bicentenary events I have been heading up at the Horniman. I expect I will blog about that in the very near future, but for now I will drop links to the BBC news and Guardian websites which are hosting slideshows of the winning and commended entries. As a result of all my busyness I had little time to field questions, but thankfully I didn’t really need to, since most people worked it out without much trouble.
This little fella is indeed a Continue reading
On Friday I gave you this mystery object:
and after a long bout of Q&A Fia managed to get the correct answer – it is indeed a Continue reading
On Friday I gave you a palaeontological mystery object and asked you to choose what you thought it was from a poll:
As it turns out, you did pretty well, with 60% of you selecting the correct category (with a couple of you making comments which went into greater detail). The object in indeed a piece of fossil Continue reading
On Friday I gave you a bit of a change from museum specimens and presented you with this:
Everyone managed to get the identification to at least within the Order level (it’s in the Orthoptera), which is good going when dealing with insects. The hard bit came down to whether it was a cricket or grasshopper. Now, the photo does not show the most important feature for distinguish between these two types of orthopteran: it’s the antennae length that gives it away (grasshoppers have short antennae, crickets have long antennae). Colour is not really important (sorry KateKatV).
That said, the vivid green colour, speckled appearance, lack of wings and characteristics shape of the ovipositor (curved bit at the back which means this is a female) are a give-away for those who are familiar with this particular beastie (and for those who use Google image to help with their identifications). It is in fact a Continue reading
