This Friday I have a bit of a change for you – an anthropological mystery object made from animal bits. This specimen was being looked at as part of a review project that we have going on at the Horniman Museum. Any idea what these teeth might belong to and where in the world this necklace might come from?
As usual you can put your suggestions, observations and questions below and I’ll do my best to respond. Good luck!
On Friday I gave you this odd-looking piece of bone to identify:
It’s something I tentatively identified a couple of weeks ago and thought you might be able to add your ideas, to make sure I wasn’t missing something. Jake was quick off the mark in suggesting it was the ear bone of a Whale, which is what I thought when I first saw it. This fitted with the large size and high density of the bone, but on closer inspection it doesn’t quite match any of the Whales.
There were a few other ideas, but none that really matched the specimen, except for a suggestion from henstridgesj that it may come from a member of the Trichechidae, which agreed with my identification of Continue reading
On Friday I gave you this fragment of bill to identify:
It’s quite distinctive in shape, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when so many of you came to the same conclusion as I did about what it was from. As it is, everyone recognised this as being part of the bill from a member of the Phalacrocoracidae (Cormorant family). Well done everybody!
There are around 40 species of Cormorant, so getting this to species is a bit more tricky and a few possibilities were mooted. However, the two which best fit the shape and size of this bill are the Little Black Cormorant Phalacrocorax sulcirostris and the European Shag Phalacrocorax aristotelis. A quick comparison of the two on the excellent SkullSite.com (P. sulcirostris and P. aristotelis) show that the bill proportions and shape of the bony palate in the mystery specimen are closest to the Continue reading
On Friday I gave you this pair of bones to identify:
It didn’t take long for the type of bone to be identified, with Anthony Wilkes immediately spotting that these are the quadrates of a bird. Then things got more tricky as the type of bird became the focus of the identification.
Robin was the first to recognise the family and likely type of bird, with henstridgesj concurring, with the agreement being on these quadrates being from a Continue reading
This week I’ve got two bits of bone (photographed to show the shape from each side) that I identified at work last week – can you work out what these are and what animal they’re from?
As usual you can put your suggestions, comments and questions below and I’ll do my best to respond. Good luck!
On Friday I gave you this specimen to identify:
As I suspected, the distinctive shape of the skull makes this specimen easily recognisable as an owl (family Strigiformes). However, there are a couple of hundred species of owl, so there were plenty of possibilities to make a more specific identification.
This specimen has quite a distinctive slope to the forehead in profile view and a very clear groove down the midline of the cranium, which combined with the length of around 58mm narrowed down the likely suspects considerably.
Jake was the first to suggest the species I think it’s most likely to be, with palaeosam suggesting the other possible option and RH cautiously suggesting both. This skull belongs to an owl in the genus Continue reading
On Friday I gave you this great skull from the Grant Museum of Zoology to identify:
A big list of you (Mieke Roth, Jake, mcarnall, Anthony wilkes, 23thorns, Cam Weir, henstridgesj, Rhea, leigh and Robin) managed to work out what this specimen was from and there were some really interesting explanations about how you came to your conclusions in response to Steven D. Garber’s comment:
Now, I’d like it even more if people explained why this skull looks the way it does.
This is a really interesting thing to consider, as it underlies the process of recognition and identification. As a biologist I might start by saying that the lacrimal foramina is on the edge of the orbit (as henstridgesj pointed out) which is indicative of a marsupial and that the dentition is indicative of a carnivorous mammal that isn’t a member of the placental Carnivora as it lacks carnassials, plus the dental formula appears to be ‘primitive’ from the photo ?.1.3.4/?.1.2.4 which narrows down the possibilities to just a few marsupial carnivores, and given the scale of the skull there is just one that fits the bill.
However, if I’m honest I’d say that the overall shape and robust structure of this specimen is very similar to specimens I’ve seen before belonging to the Continue reading
On Friday I gave you this object to identify:
It was a bit of a tricky one, since a few vertebrae aren’t a huge amount to go on. However, the large size helps narrow it down, as do the distinctively long neural spines.
As Ric Morris and henstridgesj spotted, the vertebrae are very compressed, not providing much scope for movement, suggesting an animal that relies on a rigid backbone for support and transferring large forces. This is not something you see in whales (at least not after the cervical and first few thoracic vertebrae), since water supports their weight and they maintain some flexibility in their spine for changing their orientation in the water when swimming. That leaves us with very few terrestrial mammals big enough to have vertebrae of this size – particularly considering that these vertebrae are from a juvenile animal.
The neural spines are long, but not laterally flattened. This suggests that they are not from a large Buffalo, Hippopotamus or Rhinoceros, since all of these animals have their neural spines orientated as a dorsal blade. The only animal of the right size that has dorso-ventrally flattened neural spines in the mid-thoracic region (that I’m aware of) is the Continue reading
This week I have a slight change from skulls for you to identify, with these vertebrae from the collections at the Horniman Museum:
Any idea what they belonged to? As usual you can put your suggestions and comments below and I’ll do my best to reply. Good luck!
Apologies for a late and rather short answer to last week’s mystery object, I was in Scotland for the wedding of a very good friend this weekend and haven’t had much time for writing.
On Friday I gave you this skull to identify:
It’s pretty distinctive and I wasn’t surprised to see the correct identification popping up in short order. The big scars above the eye sockets indicate that this bird had large glands for extracting excess salt, which means it was a marine bird. The shape of the bill, particularly the mandible, is also quite characteristic and the wide triangular pterygoid bones of the palate are a give-away for this group.
Pterygoid bones highlighted
Ian managed to get the correct species identification within the first hour with Barbara Powell and Robin reaching the same conclusion after some comparison at the very useful Seabird Osteology website. This is the skull of a Continue reading
Over the last week or so I’ve been going through some of the bird skulls in the Horniman’s collection. Here’s a nice one that you might enjoy identifying:
As usual you can put your suggestions, comments and questions below and I’ll do my best to answer. Good luck!
On Friday I gave you this fragment of an object to identify:
Many of the key features we look for when making an identification of a skull are in the facial region. The teeth are the most useful feature, but the relative proportions of the rostrum (muzzle) in the context of the whole skull and the particulars of the various elements that interconnect to make a skull all contain useful information.
It’s rather similar to recognising a person in fact – it’s much easier when you can see their face than it is when all you can see is the back of their head.
So how did everyone do? Well, there were various suggestions as to what it might be, but it was basically a guessing game, relying mainly on scale, gross morphology and the shape of the auditory bullae (aka the bulbous bit containing the ear bones). Most guesses focussed on the carnivores although there were some large rodents suggested.
I thought henstridgesj might have worked it out when he asked ‘Are the bullae double-chambered? Possibly, I can’t really tell, but if they are then it’s in the suborder Feliformia‘ and I answered in the affirmative, but the most obvious answer was somehow missed.
This object is almost certainly the rear part of the skull of a Continue reading
This week I am delving into a box of bits to provide a genuine mystery object. I expect I will be doing a few items from this box in the coming weeks, since I am reaching the end of my curatorial review of the Horniman’s mammal osteology collections and I have been left with just a few boxes of random odds and ends that have been on display or have been cut up and the other part put on display.
These items have no information with them at all, so each is a genuine mystery that I hope to solve – a process that starts with identification. Any idea what this might be?
As usual you can put your thoughts, suggestions and observations below and I’ll do my best to reply. Good luck!
This week I’ve got something that will probably be way too easy, but it’s a great specimen from the Horniman Museum:
Any idea what this cheeky looking chap might be?
I probably won’t get a chance to respond to comments today, although I will try. Good luck!
On Friday I gave you this object to identify:
There were fewer comments than usual, but those comments were impressively observant.
Lena got stuck in, identifying the element as a long, thin ungulate humerus and narrowing it down to a camelid. Mikolaj Lisowski noticed the low proximal epiphysis (the end of the bone that is connected to the shoulder) and suggested that it might belong to a Continue reading
This Friday I have a mystery object that may be a bit of a challenge. Any idea what this is, or more to the point, what it’s from?
As usual you can put your questions, comments and suggestions below and I’ll do my best to get back to you. Good luck!
Normally Monday mornings are the time that the answer to the mystery object is posted on my blog, but this weekend I’ve been involved in the Enlightenment Cafe, which has meant I’ve been too busy to write the usual full answer. Here are a couple of images of me doing my bit in the show (photo on stage courtesy of @sillypunk):
But excuses for tardiness aside, here is the mystery object I would have been writing a proper answer for if I wasn’t on a stage talking to a room full of people:
You all spotted that it was a type of canid (dog) straight away, but the species was a little bit more tricky. Many went for a fox of some kind, as it is quite a small specimen, but Barbara Powell, Jamie Revell and Ethan plumped for the correct answer of Continue reading
Apologies for the slight late running of this, my sesquicentennial Friday mystery object – I was giving a talk about mermaids last night that went on until quite late (and which had an exciting special guest), but more about that later.
I’ve been waiting to do this object for a while – it’s a favourite of mine, which is good, since it is part of my own personal collection. Any idea what it is?
As usual you can put your questions, comments and suggestions below and I’ll do my best to respond. I will also add that I will have this specimen, along with the others in my collection, at the Enlightenment Cafe this Saturday and Sunday at the Old Vic Tunnels. There may also be the special guest who appeared at my talk last night, but that is a story for later… Good luck!
On Friday I gave you a bit of a spot-the-difference with these two skulls, wanting to know if they were two individuals from the same species or if they were from two different species:
I must say that it was a bit of a tricky identification without the added complexity of a between specimen comparison, yet you all did remarkably well.
As usual Jake was the first to comment, correctly identifying that the specimens are both rodents and squirrels at that. He also recognised that both were adult animals, although one was probably older than the other when it died, based on the degree of wear on the teeth (assuming the diet was similar). The squirrel identification was also supported by Will, henstridgesj, Dave Godfrey, Jamie Revell and Barbara Powell.
Barbara also picked up on the feature that made me consider that these specimens may have been from different species – the sutures between the premaxilla, maxilla, nasals and frontal bones that make up the rostrum (the nosey bit). This is something that Lena and Jamie Revell also commented upon.
The position of the sutures (or junctions) between the various bones that make up the rostrum can certainly be useful in diagnosing differences between species – it’s a handy one for distinguishing between Lions and Tigers for example:
However, in this case I don’t think that the differences between the sutures are all that diagnostic, I think the differences may simply be down to either sexual dimorphism (that’s where males and females of the same species develop differently) or differences between the ages of the individuals. In fact, given that the specimen with the more heavily worn teeth is smaller and less robust than the other specimen I wouldn’t be surprised if it was an older female and younger male of the same species that are being compared.
One of the reasons I don’t think the sutures are diagnostic comes down to timing of their fusion. According to Wilson & Sánchez-Villagra, 2009 the pattern of closure of the cranial sutures in rodents follows a fairly standard pattern, with the rostral elements being amongst the last to fuse. This suggests that those sutures are more likely to vary between animals of different ages and between animals with different life histories. That said, there are geographical variations in this species, so these specimens may represent individuals of different subspecies from different parts of the range – something I can’t check because there is no locality information with them (at least not that I’ve found yet).
With the spot-the-difference dealt with, I will leave you with the correct species identification as made by henstridgesj, these are the skulls of Continue reading
On Friday I gave you this object to identify:
As usual Jake was in like a shot with a correct general identification of whale vertebra. However, identifying what kind of vertabra and what species of whale is a more tricky prospect. The type of vertebra was narrowed down quite quickly by Jake, henstridgesj , Barbara Powell and Kevin K, all of whom agreed that it was one of the cervical (or neck) vertebrae.
Now the neck vertebrae in whales are odd. All mammals have seven vertebrae in their necks (even Giraffes), but whale neck vertebrae are a bit odd as in many whale species they tend to be fused together (as Barbara Powell pointed out). This makes sense when you think about how whales behave – they don’t need to turn their heads much, so having separated vertebrae is not necessary and may even cause problems considering the forces transmitted through the neck vertebrae during swimming, surfacing and feeding.
The pattern of fusion varies according to species and stage of development – some whales have no fusion, some have all of their neck vertebrae fused, others have the atlas (the first cervical that articulates with the skull) free and the other six vertebrae fused and yet others have the atlas, axis (the second cervical that the atlas pivots on) and the next four cervical vertebrae fused and the seventh and last cervical free. Just to complicate matters young whales start off with all of the vertebrae free and they fuse as the animal develops, which means that a young animal will not conform to the adult form.
In light of this situation, the mystery object becomes rather tricky to identify without being able to see the amount of fusion or other parts of the same specimen that may indicate developmental stage. That just leaves us with size and shape to go on, which is a bit problematic unless you have a suitable reference to compare this specimen against.
As it turns out I was unable to find a decent set of images for comparison and we don’t have much whale material at the Horniman. This means I’ve been a bit stumped in trying to identify this specimen – particularly since it came to us with the limited description ‘Vertebra of Whale’.
The size, shape and fusion suggest to me that it is from one of the large Oceanic Dolphins (Delphinidae), such as a Pilot Whale or Killer Whale. This would agree with Barbara Powell’s suggestion, but it would disagree with an identification that was made by a marine mammal expert who has helped me with identifications in the collections in the past. He suggested that this vertebra belonged to a Sperm Whale Physeter macrocephalus Linnaeus, 1758 – presumably a young individual, given the size, although that doesn’t really tally with the amount of fusion.
Apologies for the somewhat tentative outcome of this mystery object, but it serves as another example of the lack of certainty that we sometimes have to accept when trying to identify specimens – it can really be a pain in the neck.
Zygoma 