Tag Archives for identification

Friday mystery object #273 answer

Last week I gave you this mystery object to get your input on:

mystery273

It was labelled Ovis aries, which didn’t ring quite true for me, so I thought it would be good to see if you also had other ideas, since I’ve noticed that there is a tendency for ungulates of a certain size in museum collections to be assumed to be Sheep.

In other museums I’ve found female Red Deer, Gerenuk and on one occasion even a Badger skull that had been labelled “Sheep”.

mystery273-gerenuk

Labelled “Sheep” but actually a Gerenuk.

This is what a sheep looks like:

mystery273-sheep

You’ll probably notice the “Roman nose” that is quite distinctively sheepy, it also has no gaps between the premaxilla and maxilla and there is a small depression in front of the eye.

When you look underneath, one of the key things that jumps out is the difference in size of the auditory bullae (mystery on the left, sheep on the right):

mystery273-mystery_and_shee

So I’m pretty sure that the mystery object isn’t a sheep, but what is it?

There were lots of suggestions of exotic and interesting ungulates, but after looking at the skulls of a huge number of ungulates I can to the conclusion that Latinka Hristova and Jake were on the right track with the simple suggestion of Goat Capra hircus (Linnaeus, 1758).

Taking a look at Goat specimens on the incredibly useful Mammalian Crania Photographic Archive has convinced me that this is what the mystery object actually is. Not a million miles from Sheep I suppose, but they are different and it’s helpful finding some small differences that help distinguish between them.

Thanks for your input!

Friday mystery object #272 answer

Last Friday I gave you this skull to identify:

mystery272

It was a bit of mean one, because although the family is fairly distinctive, it has poor species representation in online resources or indeed the literature.

The cranium is quite low and long, with some similarities to an otter, but the rostrum (or muzzle) is a bit too narrow and the teeth aren’t quite the right shape. Also the orbits are orientated more vertically, whereas otters have orbit that are at more of an angle so the eyes are closer to the top of the head.

The overall shape, dental configuration and median lacerate foramen all suggest it’s a member of the Herpestidae.

Narrowing down the species was a step too far however, after all, there are around 34 species spread across Africa, Madagascar and Asia and Europe and they are generally quite similar in cranial morphology, with only a few species having good descriptions of the skull.

To help challenge the lack of images of mongoose crania online, I’m pleased to say that this specimen does have an identification – it’s a Ruddy Mongoose Herpestes smithii Gray, 1837. While the name Ruddy Mongoose makes it sound like it’s annoyed me, it actually refers to the reddish-brown of its coat.

A Ruddy mongoose from Daroji wildlife sanctuary in Karnataka, India. By Kalyanvarma, 2009

A Ruddy mongoose from Daroji wildlife sanctuary in Karnataka, India. By Kalyanvarma, 2009

This species is endemic to India and Sri Lanka, where it lives in dry, forested hills and feeds on pretty much anything it can get hold of, from snakes to bird eggs. As with other mongooses (or should that be mongeese?), they have a mutation that prevents snake neurotoxins from bonding at receptor sites, meaning that they are immune to some types of venom – pretty handy if you’re going to eat snakes!

Friday mystery object #272

This week I have another specimen from the Grant Museum of Zoology for you to try your hand at identifying:

mystery272

I have a feeling that it may be easy to get this identification to Family level, but species may prove a little bit more tricky.

I’d love to hear what you think it might be, so leave your suggestions in the comments box below. Have fun!

Friday mystery object #271 answer

Last Friday I gave you this odd looking V-shaped bone to identify:

mystery271a

It led to a lot of speculation on Facebook and Twitter, with ideas including a bird wishbone, hyoid or mandible. However, the comments on the blog tended to be a little more focussed in the area of the mandible of an ant-eating mammal.

The two little prongs at the anterior of this lower jaw are a bit of a give-away about which type of ant-eating mammal it is, as they are only seen on one family. When you look at the additional image I provided it becomes even easier to work out which:

mystery271b

As most of you correctly worked out, this is a specimen of Pangolin, of which there are four species in the genus Manis (thanks Allen Hazen for the correction – there are more like eight species in the family). I found this nice illustration of the skulls of the various species, to help narrow it down even further:

Anatomical and zoological researches: comprising an account of the zoological results of the two expeditions to western Yunnan in 1868 and 1875; and a monograph of the two cetacean genera, Platanista and Orcella. John Anderson, 1878.

Anatomical and zoological researches: comprising an account of the zoological results of the two expeditions to western Yunnan in 1868 and 1875; and a monograph of the two cetacean genera, Platanista and Orcella. John Anderson, 1878.

So it appears from the morphology of the premaxilla, zygomatic region and nasals that this is a Sunda Pangolin, Manis javanica Desmarest, 1822.

Manis javanica by Piekfrosch, 2006

Manis javanica by Piekfrosch, 2006

These unusual scaly insectivores are critically endangered due to poaching for their meat, skin and scales for the Chinese market, with their population suspected to have declined by 80% in the last 20 years, despite having a protected status. Sad to say that their ability to roll into an armoured ball does nothing to protect them from people.

Friday mystery object #269 answer

Last week I gave you this mystery object from the Grant Museum of Zoology to have a go at identifying:

mystery269

If you’ve been checking the mystery object recently you’ll notice that this specimen has a feature of the palate that I made reference to in the answer to mystery object #267 – the Tasmanian Devil. It’s incompletely ossified, which is a characteristic of marsupials.

The large curved canines and pointed premolars suggest some predatory activity, while the flattened molars suggest some grinding of vegetation, making this one of the marsupial omnivores, in the Order Peramelemorphia.

The large size of the skull and the long curved canines make this specimen rather distinctive – as first spotted by Richard Lawrence, this is indeed a Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #268

Merry Christmas mystery solvers!

This week I have an unusual object from the Grant Museum of Zoology for you to identify:

mystery268.jpg

It’s pretty distinctive, but I’ve not seen many of these, so hopefully it’ll make an interesting object to identify. As usual, if you think you know what it is, please leave a hint or cryptic clue rather than just writing down the answer – it makes it more fun for other people that way.

Have fun!

Friday mystery object #267 answer

Last Friday I gave you this specimen to identify:

mystery267

It was a pretty distinctive one, but a great specimen – and a nice robust example of this particular species.

The partially ossified palate and nasolacrimal (or tear) duct on the external border of the orbit shows that this is a marsupial, and the pointy, robust teeth suggest that it’s highly carnivorous with a penchant for carion, which narrows down the options pretty effectively.

As many of you recognised, this is a Tasmanian Devil Sarcophilus harrisii (Boitard, 1841) – so well done to Tone Hitchcock, Chris, Cindy Nelson-Viljoen, Ric Morris, henstridgesj, palfreyman1414, Lauren McCafferty, joe vans, Daniel Jones and Daniel Calleri, Allen Hazen and Michelle for getting this one right. The key was definitely in those marsupial characters, which immediately ruled out any of the highly diverse placental carnivores.

Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilus harrisii), Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park, Taranna, Tasmania, Australia by JJ Harrison 2010.

As several of you alluded to, the Tasmanian Devil is undergoing a major decline in population at the moment, mainly due to a particulary nasty transmissible disease that causes tumours to develop on the face, preventing feeding. The tumours are spread between individuals when they bite each other, especially when feeding, which is pretty common Devilish behaviour.

In fact, Devils are pretty rough and tumble creatures in many of their behaviours. When breeding they have a large litter of up to 30 young, which have to compete for just 4 nipples in the pouch. Unsurprisingly, few of the litter survive and presumably those that do are pretty pushy.

Hopefully the Devils will survive their current population crash. There are some individuals who show some resistance to the facial tumour disease, which reflects the importance of genetic diversity within populations. It would be a great shame if the Devils went the same way as the other large marsupial carnivore, the Thylacine.

Friday mystery object #265 answer

Last week I gave you this lovely primate skull from the Grant Museum of Zoology to identify:

mystery265

When I first saw it I assumed it was a Macaque of some kind. It’s obviously in the Cercopithecidae (or an Old World Monkey) based on the number of premolars – 4 in the upper jaw instead of the 6 you’d get in a Platyrrhini (or New World Monkey). Macaques are common in collections and they have a similar overall appearance to this specimen.

However, I then noticed the particularly deep hollows under the eyesockets and the flaring of the maxilla where it meets the nasals, which is not a characteristic of Macaques.

Monkey_skull

It actually reminded me a bit of a toned down version of a Mandrill skull, so I started by looking at the phylogeny of primates to get an idea of which species were more closely related to the genus Mandrillus.

gr2

Primate phylogeny from Goodman et al. 2005. Trends in Genetics. 21(9):511–517

As you can see the Mandrills share a sister relationship with the genus Cercocebus, which are the White-eyelid Mangabeys, so that’s where I started looking. It turns out that these infraorbital depressions are a Mangabey feature, so I then looked at the various types of Mangabey (not just those in the genus Cercocebus).

It wasn’t easy finding specimens for comparison, but I did find a very useful (if a bit old) paper on Mangabeys by Groves (1978), which gave good descriptions of the various species, allowing me to rule out the Sooty Mangabey and narrow the likely species down to the Golden-bellied Mangabey or, my personal preference, the Agile Mangabey Cercocebus agilis (Milne-Edwards, 1886).

These monkeys have a shorter, relatively broader face than the more familiar Sooty Mangabey, with deeper and broader hollows under the orbits.

So well done to everyone who recognised that this skull belonged to an Old World Monkey, with particular congratulations to Cindy Nelson-Viljoen and palfreyman1414, who all came close in terms of taxonomy and a big round of applause for inkydigit who narrowed it down to the right genus!

More mysteries to come next week…

Friday mystery object #265

This week I have a specimen that I’ve been looking at recently that you might like to have a go at identifying:

Mystery monkey

Mystery monkey

This was being used in handling sessions and needed a tooth to be reattached (huzzah for Paraloid B72), but I noticed that it lacked an identification beyond ‘monkey’ and I thought that could be improved upon.

Here it is laid out more usefully for identification purposes:

mystery265I know what I’ve narrowed it down to, but I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below!

Friday mystery object #264 answer

Last week I gave you a tricky mystery object in the form of a dusty bag:

Bag o-bones

Of course, I’m not truly that mean, so I also provided a characteristic part of the specimen:

mystery264

Despite being a bit broken, it’s fairly clearly the mandible of a felid, given the shape of that one molar and the limited sockets for the missing premolars, suggesting something with a very reduced tooth count – something that most of you spotted straight away.

The size is a bit small for a Tiger or Lion, it’s a bit big for a Puma or Cheetah and it’s not quite as robust as I’d expect from a Jaguar, leaving us with the likely identification of Leopard Panthera pardus (Linnaeus, 1758). So well done to joe vans and palreyman1414 for ‘spotting’ what it was (terribly pun, I know).

Here’s a nice Leopard skull from the Grant Museum of Zoology collections to give a sense of scale.

leopard

More mystery objects to come from the Grant next week, but if you’d like to see another specimen from the collection, my latest specimen of the week, that looks at the darker side of the Walrus might be of interest.

Friday mystery object #264

As I’ve mentioned a few times, I have recently started a new job as Curator of the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL. If you’ve never visited, you should pop by, and if you have visited then why not vote for us in the Time Out Love London Awards, preferably right now, since voting closes today. I’d love it if we could beat our heavyweight neighbour, the British Museum!

PV_micrarium_2

Moving on to the real subject of the blog, I have finally had a chance to start hunting for specimens in the Grant to see if there are any unidentified items tucked away that might make good mystery objects – and my new colleague Tannis knew just where to look:

Bag o-bones

This bag-o-bones came to us from the Royal Free Hospital and was completely sealed up, making it hard to see inside. For those of you who like a challenge I’ll leave you with just this image, but if you’d like a slightly less tricky image to work from, you can see the single most distinctive part of the specimen here.

Do you have any idea what it might be? It’s pretty easy if you check out the distinctive bit, so please keep your answers cryptic if you can!

Oh, and if you like skulls, you might be interested in my first Specimen of the Week on the Grant Museum blog.

Friday mystery object #263 answer

Last Friday I gave you this mystery object that came up at a natural materials identification course that I delivered at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter last week:

mystery263

There were a variety of suggestions as to what it might be, but everyone (correctly) discounted the information on the label that it was a tooth.

There were some suggestions of wood and ivory, but there were two suggestions which were definitely in the right ball-park. Daniel Calleri suggested it might be something fishy, while Krista got it pretty much spot on when she suggested a dorsal barb from a skate or ray.

I’m pretty sure that it’s the spine from the leading edge of the first or second dorsal fin of a Spurdog shark in the genus Squalus Linnaeus, 1758.

Spiny Dogfish (Squalus acanthias) by Dornhai

Spiny Dogfish (Squalus acanthias) by Dornhai

These turn up every so often in collections, sometimes as decoration, sometimes as items found in Native American middens. Presumably they’re composed of keratin, which is a commonly occurring structural protein in vertebrate skin that can also form hair, horn, scales and claw.

Thanks for all your comments and well done to Krista!

Friday mystery object #263

It’s been a hectic couple of weeks and I almost forgot the mystery object again because I lost track of the days!

I was hoping to use an object from my new job at the Grant Museum of Zoology today, but I never got the chance as I’ve been zipping around all over the place. Yesterday for example I was at the lovely Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) in Exeter, delivering a training session on identifying natural materials.

There were a couple of items that curator Holly wanted me to look at while I was there and I thought one of them might be good for a mystery object. Apologies for the poor quality of the photo – I didn’t have my usual set-up to hand:

Mystery object at RAMM, Exeter

Mystery object at RAMM, Exeter

Any idea what this might be? If you want more information about it, just ask in the comments and I’ll do my best to reply. Have fun!

Friday mystery object #262 answer

Last Friday I gave you this pretty characteristic mystery object from the Berlin Museum für Naturkunde to try your hand at identifying:


There were lots of great comments – I must apologise for not responding to many (and for posting the answer to this mystery object so late), my excuse is that I’ve had an insanely busy week finishing up my old job at the Horniman Museum and Gardens and then getting started in my new job at the fantastic Grant Museum of Zoology at University College London (more to come about my big paolov.files.wordpress.com/…/mystery262.jpgmove). I also got started on a really interesting project looking at Gorilla osteology and I’m feverishly trying to prepare a training workshop on identifying natural materials for next week.
Back to the object. Several of you noticed the presence of a baculum (or penis bone) which shows us quite definitively that this was a male animal (although, I later realised that this baculum does not belong to this specimen!).


It also suggests that the specimen was prepared and mounted without the prudishness that many historical mounts were affected by (see Jack Ashby’s comments about this in his post on the Grant Muesum’s Ringtail).
Many of you also correctly recognised that the plantigrade (or flat-footed) posture, short tail and robust build suggested a bear of some sort.

The distinctive sagittal crest was the final feature needed for identification for some of you to work out that this is the skeleton of a Giant Panda Ailuropoda melanoleuca (David, 1869).

I tend to think of Panda skulls as looking like a cross between those of a Hyaena and a Gorilla, which makes sense when you consider the adaptations of the jaw musculature required for the Panda to process the large volumes of tough bamboo needed to provide enough energy for survival. The bone of the skull has to be able to manage the large forces produced by all this chewing, resulting in a big and robust sagittal crest, a thick and deep mandible and really deep muscle scars on the coronoid process.

These are all features you also see in big chewers like the Gorilla and Hyaena, but not in rodents and ungulates – I think this reflects the difference between groups that rely on temporalis muscle (which runs along the side of the braincase) in chewing compared to the masseter muscle (which attaches to the zygomatic arch or cheekbone).
The final clue to confirm that this is a Giant Panda is the ‘thumb’ on the front limbs:

This handy (excuse the pun) extra ‘digit’ is actually the radial sesamoid bone of the Panda’s wrist, that has been commandeered by evolution for use as a bamboo holder. There are a few other species that have done weird things with wrist bones to gain a digit, but this is clearly not a Mole or Elephant and Red Pandas have a much longer tail.
I hope you enjoyed some of the interesting bony features of this specimen – it’s great to have a chance to see under the surface of such an iconic animal!

Friday mystery object #262

Last week I had an enjoyable trip to Berlin where (probably unsurprisingly) I visited the Museum für Naturkunde. The collections were fantastic, with specimens like this absolutely spectacular Archaeopteryx:

Archaeopteryx

but that’s a pretty obvious object, much too familiar to use for the Friday mystery object. So here’s something that might be a little less familiar to test your skills:

mystery262

It’s a pretty distinctive specimen, but hopefully it won’t be quite as familiar as the iconic Archaeopteryx.

If you recognise it straight away, please use your imagination and leave a cryptic answer so others get a chance to test their identification skills. Have fun!

Friday mystery object #261 answer

Last Friday I gave you this object from the Horniman Museum and Gardens to identify:

mystery261

It’s an odd looking bone, but that makes it distinctive, so I wasn’t too surprised that everyone recognised it as being from something aquatic. In particular, Ric Morris and joe va both recognised it as the radius of a pinniped.

The broad end that articulates with the wrist is lacking its epiphysis, indicating that this is from a younger animal. This also makes it a little harder to make a definitive species identification.

I think that Ric Morris’s cleverly disguised suggestion of Grey Seal is pretty good, although I’m leaning slightly more towards Harbour Seal Phoca vitulina Linnaeus, 1758.

The odd shape is of course one adaptation of the forelimb that reflects a change in biomechanical requirements away from the load-bearing limb of a terrestrial ancestor and towards the hydrofoil shape and drag-force-resistant flipper of an active aquatic pursuit predator.

Seal underwater by Chillum, 2007

I will never ceases to be impressed by the power of evolution as a mechanism to reshape bone to better suit new purposes!

Friday mystery object #261

This week I have a mystery object for you, that I stumbled across when preparing a talk for the Natural Sciences Collections Association’s Bone Day last week:

mystery261

It’s a bit of an odd one, so I’d love to hear what you think it might be. As usual, if you recognise what it is please give everyone else a chance by sharing your knowledge below in the guise of a rhyme or cryptic clue.

Have fun!

Friday mystery object #260 answer

Last week I broke the news that in October I’ll be taking on the role of curator at the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL. Many thanks to everyone for their congratulations and kind comments – it’s wonderful to have so much support!

I’m excited to get started in my new role, but I will be sad to no longer be the go-to person for identifying materials used in the Horniman’s Anthropology collections. This gave me the chance to see some lovely objects, like this little statue:
mystery260
I asked if you had any thoughts on what it might be, and you gave some great answers, mostly involving an ungulate canon bone or metacarpal / metatarsal. However, palaeosam and palfreyman1414 spotted that this isn’t made of bone, while Chris went one better by making a nice reference to ‘Horsing around near the river’ – a reference to the meaning of the name Hippopotamus.

The key to identifying this is to look at the curve of the statue and the view from underneath. That cavity shape (plus the gentle curve) is exactly what you’d expect from the upper canine of Hippopotamus amphibius Linnaeus, 1758 – so well done Chris!

There’s a helpful guide to identification of ivories by the US Fish & Wildlife Service, which is well worth a look to help with this sort of thing. Hopefully that’ll be a helpful resource for my colleagues at the Horniman in my absence… although they know where to find me if they need help in future!