This Friday I’m giving you a mystery object that’s on display at the Horniman Museum:
[EDIT length = 8.5cm]
Any idea what this skull is from?
As usual, you can put your suggestions, comments and questions below and I’ll do my best to answer. Good luck!
On Good Friday I gave you this object and asked ‘Any idea what this skull belongs to?‘
Given the levels of pedantism on the Internet, I’m surprised that no-one said ‘the Horniman Museum‘, which would have been a correct answer to the question, since this specimen was bought in 1936 from the German natural history supply company Schlüter and Mass and it therefore belongs to the Museum.
However, you all clearly knew I meant belonged, since you did a great job of working out which species this skull came from.
Jake immediately ruled out the large British native carnivores (Fox and Badger) and several questions later had Jamie Revell hot on the trail, only to be pipped to the post by David Craven. Kudos also goes to Carlos Grau and Gina who both came very close.
This skull belonged to an Continue reading
On Friday I gave you this cute little chap to identify:
I was very impressed with Neil’s comment, which managed to convey the scientific name of the species without giving it away. Here’s what he said:
I see one eye and two fingers
which neatly leads us to Continue reading
This week I’m going to give you an object that’s on display at the Horniman Museum. Whenever I see this specimen I’m reminded of the diversity of life that is out there in the wider world, that we never consider normally. Any idea what this skeleton belongs to?
As usual, I will do my best to reply to your questions, observations and suggestions in the comments section below.
Good luck!
I must apologise in advance for the somewhat short answer to the mystery object this week. Partly it’s because I don’t know much about musical instruments and partly because I’ve been busy pulling together a guest post for GrrlScientist over at Punctuated Equilibrium on the Guardian science blogging network (not sure when it will go live[EDIT it’s live now]). Excuses aside – on with the answer!
Last Friday I gave you this object to identify:
I was impressed that everyone immediately spotted that it was a musical instrument, but I was even more impressed that so many of you identified which continent it was from (Africa) and the general type of instrument. Historically in the West this has been referred to as a ‘thumb piano’ which is a very Eurocentric interpretation. A more accurate generic name is lamellophone (or lamellaphone).
There are lots of different sorts of lamellopone from different regions in Africa, including the mbira, the sanza, the kalimba and lukembe. This particular example differs from all of these other forms in the way in which the lamellae are secured:
This particular type has tangs on the lamellae that are driven directly into the wooden resonator, rather than having a fretboard like an mbira:
This means that the instrument is not tunable, unlike the mbira.
This unusual characteristic identifies this mystery object is an Continue reading
This week I thought I’d give you a break from the bones and provide something a bit more cultural for you to identify:
Any idea what it is, where it’s from and what it’s for?
As usual you can put your questions, comments and suggestions below and I’ll get back to you as best I can (possibly with some additional information from my colleague Tom – who knows far more about this object than I do!).
Good luck!
On Friday I gave you this archaeological mystery object from Surrey to identify:
Jake immediately spotted that it was the mandible of a carnivore and ruled out a Cat because the teeth were wrong. General consensus leaned towards this being from a mustelid of some kind – which David Craven confirmed with the correct identification of Continue reading
This week I’m going to give you something to identify from an archaeological excavation near Coulsdon in Surrey. It was associated with human remains and some clay pipes that suggest an approximate date between 1600-1850AD. Any idea what this section of mandible belonged to?
After getting the scale wrong last week I have made sure that there are scale bars in the image this time!
As usual you can put your questions, observations and suggestions in the comments section below and I’ll do my best to respond. Good luck!
On Friday the mystery object was provided by Mark Carnall, the curator of the newly reopened Grant Museum of Zoology:
It’s not been an easy one to work out – I thought it was part of a fish skull when I first saw it and comments have ranged from a squashed frog to Yoda’s foot.
The closest suggestions came from Jamie Revell, Steven D. Garber, PhD and Helen (sort of…), this is the Continue reading
This Friday we have a guest mystery object from the newly reopened (and rather fantastic) Grant Museum of Zoology:
I got this one wrong when I first saw it – I hope you manage to do better!
I’ll do my best to give clues and answers to questions during the day, but hopefully Mark and Jack from the Grant will be able to provide some guidance as well. More about the awesome new Grant Museum on Monday with the answer. Good luck!
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
This week I thought it would be nice to give you a bit of a break from the usual skulls, so this week I have a fluid preserved specimen for you to identify:
It may just look like a small white blob, but it’s my favourite small white blob ever. Can you work out what it is?
As usual you can put your observations, comments and suggestions below and I’ll do my best to respond. Good luck!
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
This Friday I’m at a conference in sunny Newcastle, so I might not get to answer questions on this post until a bit later in the day, but I have a feeling you won’t need my help on this one! Any idea what this object from the Horniman collection might be?
Please do feel free to ask questions and make suggestions below – I will do my very best to respond. Good luck!
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
This week I have a really tough one for you. It’s a specimen I found in our collections with a tentative identification that I was unconvinced by. I followed my instincts and they led me not only to a more accurate identification, but also to the rest of the specimen, from which it had been separated before they even arrived at the Horniman. Can you work out what it is?
Please feel free to ask questions and make observations or suggestions in the comments section below and I’ll do my best to respond. Good luck!
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
This Friday I’ve decided to give you a challenge in the form of one of my favourite interesting animal bits. This mystery object is one that a few people in the know will identify immediately, because it is so distinctive, but anyone who hasn’t seen one before is likely to struggle a bit.
Do you have any idea what type of bone this is and which species it came from? (N.B. it’s the same bone photographed from different sides.)
For those few that are in the know perhaps you could drop hints rather than blurting out the answer and for the rest of you, please feel free to ask for clues – I will do my best to offer guidance throughout the day.
Good luck!
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
This Friday I’m going for a mystery object that I’m sure you will all identify to species without any problem – it’s pretty big and pretty distinctive. Hopefully this object will give me a chance to write an interesting answer on Monday, so I can use it as a stand-alone post for a guest blogging spot I’m doing for Scientopia for a couple of weeks starting on Sunday. I’m intending to use this guest-spot to get myself motivated to tackle the various posts I’ve been wanting to cover for some time now.
Unfortunately, I’ve managed to time this slot quite badly, since I also need to prepare for a SITP talk that I’m giving on Monday 21st Feb and a Cafe Scientifique on the evening of Thurday 24th Feb (if you missed the last one, here’s the write-up). It’s going to be a busy couple of weeks…
On to the reason you came here – the Friday mystery object:
Any idea what this is?
As usual you can put your suggestions, comments and questions below and I’ll do my best to offer guidance. Good luck!
Zygoma 