Friday mystery object #231 answer

Last Friday I gave you this distinctive skull to identify:

I knew it would be a bit of an easy one, given the highly unusual teeth, but it seemed too interesting a specimen to not use.

As cryptically suggested by many of you (Jamie Revell, Nigel Monaghan, henstridgesj, rachel, cromercrox, Robin Birrrdegg, Allen Hazen and Crispin), this is indeed the skull of a Crabeater Seal Lobodon carcinophaga (Hombron & Jacquinot, 1842).

These seals are specialised for catching krill, hence the strange shape and tightly fitting nature of their teeth, which act as a filter to strain the tiny crustaceans from ocean water.

Because these seals live in the waters all around the Antarctic, monitoring their population is particularly difficult, so estimates of their numbers vary considerably, from 2 million to 12 million (which is the more likely figure).

As with most abundant animals they have predators, in particular Leopard Seals. Apparently 78% of adult Crabeaters bear scars of Leopard Seal attacks, which can be seen clearly on the live individual in the image above. Most of the attacks happen before the Crabeaters reach a year old and get a bit too big to be easy prey, but in that first year there is apparently a huge mortality rate, with only 20% of seals making it to their first birthday. Good old Mother Nature is never one for sentiment.

Friday mystery object #231

This week I have a very distinctive skull for you to identify:

Because I expect some of you to work out what it is straight away, can you make your answer cryptic please, to give other people an opportunity to work it out.

I look forward seeing some cunning and clever hints at what this is!

Friday mystery object #230

This week I have an object that was in need of identification that I found in the collections. Any idea what this is?

As usual you can put your comments, thoughts and suggestions below. Enjoy!

Friday mystery object #229 answer

Last Friday I was at the SPHNHC, NatSCA and GCG joint conference in Cardiff, which provided a fantastic opportunity to catch up with natural science curators, conservators and collections managers from all over the world, but which gave me limited time to spend on the mystery object.

As a result you ended up with an object that made an appearance in a ‘feely box’ at a fun pub quiz organised by guys at the Oxford Museum of Natural History.

Feely boxes in action

Lurking within…

It’s not the prettiest object but it’s characteristic shape and structure makes it readily identifiable using touch.

Jake spotted that it was a horizontal section through a skull, including the palate and Maxine and Julie Howard recognised the tusk alveoli extending from the maxilla, and correctly suggested Pumbaa, or Warthog Phacochoerus africanus (Gmelin, 1788).

Touch is an often under-appreciated sense in science, but it can be used to identify some specimens and provide a new perspective on the evolution of forms in nature. This is something I came to realise when working at the National Museum of Ireland – Natural History in Dublin, where I was fortunate enough to meet evolutionary biologist Dr Geerat Vermeij, who has been blind since birth, yet is able to identify shells to species and read part of their life history from touch alone.

Geerat Vermeij, Evolutionary Biologist, Reading A Shell’s Story from Shape of Life on Vimeo.

Coming up in July and August

I don’t normally use my blog to publicise the event that I have coming up, because quite frankly I’m not usually that organised.

Doing a theatrical turn for the Enlightenment Cafe. Photo by Liz Lutgendorff 2012

Nonetheless, if you have the strange compunction to hear me speak, or to attend something I’ve helped organise, here are some gigs that are coming up soon (click the links for details):

July

12th July 2014 (09:00 – 18:00): Tetrapod Zoology Conference (London Wetlands Centre) – I’ll be talking about my research on mermaids at 11ish during this exciting all-day conference.

Tetrapod Zoology

16th July (18:30 for 19:30 start): Science in the Pub (Old King’s Head, London Bridge) – The monthly science talk I host every 3rd Wednesday of the month, with Dr Erica McAlister from the NHM talking about science and museums
18th July 2014 (09:30 for 10:00 start): Taxidermy: Creativity, Curation, Context & Care (Chandler House, Bloomsbuy, London) – I’ll be chairing this one day conference, which should be brilliant as the line-up of speakers is looking great!

22nd July 2014 (18:30 for 19:30 start): Conspire presents Flight (47-49 Tanner Street, London) – I’ll be doing a freestyle talk in an arty environment about how and why birds fly the way they do.
24th July 2014 (18:30 start): Chimpanzee! Insights about Ourselves from our Closest Cousin (Islington Museum, London) – I’ll be digging into how we have learned about and from Chimpanzees, part of the Horniman’s Objects in Focus loans project.

Image by Sean Dooley

25th – 27th July 2014 (17:00 on 27th): Winchester Science Festival (Discovery Centre, Winchester) – I’ll be talking about the evolution and adaptations of the skull in vertebrates.

August

8th August 2014 (time TBC): 5×15 at Hendrick’s Carnival of Knowledge (1 Royal Circus, Edinburgh) – I’ll be exploring what a curator does, with examples, for this Edinburgh Fringe event.
16th August 2014 (time TBC): A History of the Horse (Bromley Museum, Orpington) – I’ll be exploring the close link between horses and humans in history as part of the Horniman’s Objects in Focus loans project.

20th August 2014 (18:30 for 19:30 start): Science in the Pub (Old King’s Head, London Bridge) – TBC

That’ll do for now as details get more fuzzy as we look further into the future, but there are more talks coming up in in September, which I’ll add at a later date. Now I’d better think about getting some of these talks prepared!

Bonus mystery object

I usually offer up a mystery object on Friday, but here’ a bonus object that landed on my desk this morning.

Apparently it was found in a horsefield in Kent, I have narrowed down the likely species of the animal that ‘donated’ the bone to a couple of options, but thought you might like to have a go as well, before the specimen is handed over to our Anthropologists to inspect the engraved designs.

As usual can can leave your comments below. Have fun!

Friday mystery object #228 answer

Last Friday I gave you these bits of mystery forelimb (scapula and humerus) to identify:

I thought it would be an easy one, since it’s from a very common species with a near global distribution – plus the humerus has quite a characteristic crest along the proximal end, from the shoulder articulation to the middle of the bone.

Most people who commented noticed this crest and Jake suggested that it had adaptive features (along with the scapula), maybe for a specialised way of life.

As it turns out, these bones come from an animal that is probably best described as a specialist generalist – a Brown Rat Rattus norvegicus (Berkenhout, 1769).

These versatile and intelligent animals are very good climbers and brilliant swimmers, using their forelimbs to both get around and manipulate food.

This particular rat was a male pet rat purchased from Harrods in October 1960 – I get the impression it didn’t survive for that long, since the humerus head hasn’t fully fused. You can’t buy pets from Harrods any more, so this specimen not only shows us what a rat’s humerus and scapula look like, but it also represents a teeny-tiny piece of British history.

Friday mystery object #228

This week’s mystery object is a bit of a break from the cat skulls. Any idea what these two bones are and what species they’re from?

As always, you can put your thoughts and suggestions in the comments section below, but if you think it’s easy please try to be a bit cryptic in your response, to give other people a chance. Enjoy!

Friday mystery object #227 answer

On Friday I asked you to spot the differences between these two cat skulls and I wondered whether anyone could identify them:

Both henstridgesj and Allen Hazen made some good observations, the first being about the difference in size, then about morphological features that I’ve marked on this image:

Now henstridgesj also correctly identified one of the skulls – the one on the right of the image is from a Domestic Cat Felis catus Linnaeus, 1758.

As it turns out, this was a bit of a trick mystery object, since BOTH of the skulls belong to Domestic Cats, so this gives us a useful idea of the kind of variation we might expect within a species.

I think that the main cause of variation between these two animals is probably sex, with the male on the left and the female on the right. There may also be differences based on age (although I don’t think that’s a major factor), breed and perhaps disease (the larger specimen looks like it had an infection that affected the surface of the bone).

After taking various measurements, the most useful difference I’ve found between the two skulls is shown with the yellow line. I think that the ratio of these two measurements may provide a way to tell the difference between a male and female cat (in the male it’s around 1 or less than 1, in the female it’s greater than 1) but I’ll need to make a LOT more measurements to test this.

Two other ideas that could be tested were suggested by henstridgesj and Allen Hazen. Allen said: “My impression is that the presence and development of sagital crests, among felidae, correlates pretty strictly with size” and henstridges said: “It seems that if the species of cats are arranged in increasing size order, then the anterior half of the skull (forward of the frontal-parietal suture) seems to increase in size more than the posterior half”.

I’d better take a look to see if this has been tested before…

International Museum Day: why are museums important?

Today is International Museum Day, which provides a nice opportunity to share some thoughts on why museums are important for society.

Museums are a source of knowledge, enjoyment and inspiration

The first point is that they contribute to the economy – in the UK tourism is a significant contributor to the economy, accounting for 9.0% of GDP, so tourism is big business. Why do tourists come to the UK? Because we have things they want to visit of course – things like museums. 32.8 million tourists came to the UK last year and they made 21 million visits to the 16 DCMS sponsored museums. It’s probably not unreasonable to say that an estimated 64% of tourists to the UK visit museums as part of their experience, bearing in mind that there are around 1,800 accredited museums in the UK, there’s a pretty good chance that the total number of tourist visits to museums in the UK is quite a bit greater than that 21 million.

A recent report on tourism by Deloitte recognises this and explicitly states:

The supply side offer of tourist infrastructure also extends to attractions, and standards in this area can have a significant influence on the appeal of the overall tourism offer of the UK. Some of Britain’s most well-known attractions have long suffered from inadequate infrastructure, such as parking, visitor centres, and museums and educational facilities. It will be important for Britain to maintain and improve in this infrastructure as competitor destinations invest in infrastructure which may risk diverting visitors away from the UK.

In addition, museums generate revenue at a more local level, attracting visitors who need to eat and drink, or buy things from museum shops, like greetings cards, plastic dinosaurs and copies of brilliant books like Jake’s Bones.

Museums aren’t just scrounging from the government, they generate revenue and contribute to the local and national economy

Beyond the immediate economic argument, museum collections provide a physical record of the life and culture on our planet, both past and present. They provide the hard evidence to recognise and describe the different species on Earth and they provide a historical record of how things once were, for comparison against the present, helping us to better understand change and make better predictions for the future. So museums can help us shape a better future by understanding the past and present.

Museum collections document the amazing diversity of life and the diversity of human material culture

Part of this role is fulfilled by making collections accessible to the public for their information, education and entertainment (because entertainment helps us learn too – I’m a big proponent of informal learning). However, there is also a need for research that feeds into academia and the informing of local, national and international policy decisions.

Even research that doesn’t seem to have immediate practical application is useful for testing ideas, exploring human creativity and gaining a deeper insight into other people’s minds and cultures. This sort of work may not rock the world of politics or science, but it can be effective for engaging the public and encouraging a deeper interest in topics that have a benefit to society that, at least to my mind, stretches far beyond the outcome of the X-Factor finals or which minor celebrity is divorcing which other minor celebrity.

Museums are there to nurture, support and inspire a fascination with the wider world, and really that’s why I think they’re important.

Friday mystery object #226

A rushed mystery object today I’m afraid, as I was doing talks at a late event last night and I have a painfully early start this morning – plus I’ve not been in the stores this week, so no opportunity to get a good mystery object to photograph!

So here’s an object that I was asked to identify a while back, that I took some snaps of on my phone. Apologies for the poor image quality:

Any idea what this might be? As usual you can put your observations, questions and suggestions in the comments section below.

Friday mystery object #225 answer

Last Friday I gave you this felid skull to identify:

As with the other cats over the last few weeks, it’s been difficult to find really clear diagnostic features.

The size helps narrow down the possibilities and the lack of divided auditory bullae rules out some of the species of Lynx, as does the presence of the small first premolar.

However, beyond that there isn’t much to really differentiate this cat from other species, apart from general features of relative proportion (height vs width vs length) and perhaps the angle of the rear part of the sagittal crest (which will probably vary between individuals).

Nonetheless, henstridgesj managed to correctly identify this as an Ocelot Leopardus pardalis (Linnaeus, 1758), one of the largest of the small cats in South America.

My challenge is going to be find a way to pull together the variety of cat skulls we’ve had for the last few weeks, to help make cat skulls a little easier to identify in the future – if that’s even possible. No pressure…

Friday mystery object #225

We’re heading towards the end of the cats this week – any idea what this slightly battered looking feline might be?

Suggestions gratefully received in the comments section below!

Friday mystery object #224 answer

Last Friday I gave you this felid skull to have a go at identifying:

The size was larger than the previous cat skulls I’ve shown you, which helped reduce the possibilities a bit – after all, there are more smaller cats than bigger ones.

As it turns out, Sam Misan and henstridgesj both managed to work out that this is the skull of a Serval Leptailurus serval (Schreber, 1776).

A Serval cat at Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, by Bob, 2007

These long-legged cats have a relatively small head, but huge ears – and the large external auditory meatus (ear hole) with a very pronounced ridge above for attachment of the muscles of the pinna (the fleshy part of the ear) helps reflect that.

The long legs and the big ears are key to the Serval’s hunting technique in the long grasses of the African savannah, where they listen for the movement of rodents which they dramatically leap on. Probably easier to appreciate this method by seeing it:

Friday mystery object #223 answer

Last Friday I gave you this fine feline to have a go at identifying:

I was a little suspicious of the identification attached to the specimen, but Al Klein suggested the same species – the Jaguarundi Puma yagouaroundi (É. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1803) [link opens pdf].

My reasons for suspicion were the nature of the post-orbital constriction (the narrowing of the braincase behind the eyes), the nature of the zygomaticotemporal suture between the temporal process of the zygomatic and the zygomatic process of the temporal bone (the bit where two bones meet to make the arch of the cheek) and the shape of the nasal bones where they meet the frontals (the V shaped bones above the nose area).

The observation by henstridgesj that the skull was similar to the previous mystery object (Leopardus tigrinus) was a good one, so I decided to research the genus Leopardus in a bit more detail, to see if there was a better match.

It turns out that the skull I found that matched this one most closely – especially with regard to the relative lack of a post-orbital constriction and the nasal-frontal junction – was the highly arboreal Margay Leopardus wiedii (Schinz, 1821) [link opens pdf].

I’m always a bit reticent to re-identify specimens that have original labels from the supplier attached as this one does, but this comes from suppliers (Dr.s Schlüter & Mass) that I know have seriously misidentified or mislabelled specimens in the past (e.g. labelling a African Lappet-faced Vulture as an Andean Condor from Bolivia).

Of course, the real identification may be even more complicated, since the South American cats have a bit of a track record for hybridising to the point of masking distinct species, so any identification I make will be laden with disclaimers and caveats. The joy of real-world animals when contrasted against nice simple biological concepts…

Friday mystery object #223

I hope you’re not all fed up with cats yet, because here’s another:

I have concerns about the identification attached to this one, so let’s see if your thoughts agree with what I have written on the label.

As always, you can put your thoughts below and they will be very welcome!

The Mermaid

As you may already know, I’ve been doing a lot of work on a mermaid specimen in the collections of the Horniman Museum & Gardens over the last few years.

The upshot of all that activity is that I have a paper written in a journal that will be hitting the bookshelves any day now. As you may have heard me say before, the specimen is not made of a monkey attached to a fish – I know that after undertaking painstaking examination of the specimen using CT scanning equipment and DNA sampling and good old fashioned anatomical investigation.

Instead it appears to be a real creature of uncertain taxonomic affiliation. The teeth suggest a link to the Wrasse family, the tail to the Carp and the torso to no known living group, so I have designated this specimen as the type for its species and have named it Pseudosiren paradoxoides. Full details can be found in the paper which is due out next week in the Journal of Museum Ethnography – I’m so excited!

#MuseumSelfie

Today is #MuseumSelfie day as part of #MuseumWeek, so here are few selfies of me trying to recreate the look of specimens from the Horniman’s natural history gallery.

Utterly ridiculous, but fun nonetheless. If you have some similar selfies why not link to them below in the comments section? After all, I don’t want to be the only one looking silly!

Friday mystery object #222 answer

Last Friday I gave you this fabulous feline skull to have a go at identifying:

No one got quite the right species, but several people (Crispin, manwhohunts, Maxine and Alex Klein) managed to narrow it down to the correct genus.

The flat frontals give the forehead a slope rather than the usual curve we’ve seen in previous cats of this size, making the cranium appear very domed in contrast. The post orbital processes are quite short and gracile (slender). The jaw is quite short while maxilla bone above the canines appears pinched in and the nasals are steep and protruding somewhat. These are features that appear in the genus Leopardus – the South and Central American small spotted cats.

How to distinguish between different species of Leopadus is more of a problem. Daniel Jones picked up on the incredibly robust bone margin of the foramen magnum (the hole the spinal chord goes into), which may be distinctive, but so far I’ve not seen the underside of other small Leopardus species skulls, so I can’t be sure.

All I know is that this is the skull of an Oncilla Leopardus tigrinus (Schreber, 1775), a small and mainly ground-hunting South American forest cat. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, cats are so difficult to identify!

11 questions to a museum blogger for #museumweek

Twitter has provided some great opportunities for sharing blogs, photos and other interesting content relating to museums. If you’re interested in museums, from either a personal or professional perspective, you should definitely try using twitter.

This week is #MuseumWeek, which provides me with an excellent and relevant excuse for being tardy in responding to Jack Shoulder’s 11 questions to me, which he shared last week on #MuseumBlogs day.

1. Who are you and what do you like about blogging?

I’m Paolo Viscardi, curator, bonegeek and staunch advocate of museums and science. Blogging for me is something that I don’t really enjoy doing, but I really enjoy the outcomes, when I feel like I’ve shared information, ideas and some of the good bits of my amazing job.

2. What is the most popular post on your blog?

Last year I published a post called Atacama ‘alien’ mystery is no mystery, which wasn’t directly about museums, although they do get a mention. It’s had around 45000 views so far, with almost 14000 of those on the day it was posted. There have been 136 comments, not counting the offensive or trolling ones I deleted. It was a controversial post in that it challenged some very odd ideas, that some conspiracy theorists seemed to take quite seriously, without applying much critical thought.

3. And which post on your blog did you have the most fun writing?

Back in 2011 there was a lot of hype about a prediction of the Rapture (the ascent to Heaven in advance of the end of the world) by evangelical Christian Harold Camping. I had a lot of fun writing the post Jesus disappointed by Rapture flop, which took the position that the Rapture had actually happened and only one person ascended, who wasn’t even a Christian. Since most of my posts are observational or factual it made a nice change of pace and gave me a chance to play with ideas.

4. If you could go behind the scenes of any museum, which one would it be and why?

Most of my museum experiences involve going behind the scenes. I rarely go to see exhibitions and I’m usually visiting other museums in order to meet other curators, or to do some research. I’ve not yet been to the West Coast of America, but if I ever make it over there I’d love to get behind the scenes at the Page Museum at Rancho La Brea to take a look at some of the amazing fossil mammal material they have in their collections.

Smilodon at the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits. Image by Dallas Krentzel

5. If you could interview anyone, anyone at all, for your blog, who would you talk to and what would be the first question you ask them?

I’m interested in observing the physical world and trying to understand it, so I’ve never considered doing interviews. I suppose I could interview other scientists, but I’m not really a natural people-person and I would struggle to know what to ask!

6. What is your earliest museum memory?

This is a question I’ve (sort of) answered for Meet a Museum Blogger on Museum Minute a while back, so I’ll repeat that here:

“Seeing the door into the Palaeontology department at the Natural History Museum in London (the one next to the Megatherium specimen) is one of the clearest memories from my childhood – it was at that point I realized there must be people working behind the scenes in museums and that I could be one of them.”

Megatherium at London NHM. Image by Ballista

7. What was the last museum you visited what did you see?

Apart from the Horniman, which I visit every week day for work, the last museum I visited was the Città della Scienza (Naples Science Centre) at the start of March. That was a scouting trip for a potential temporary Dinosaur exhibition for the Horniman. I was impressed by the museum’s tenacity in the face of outright criminal assault, following an arson attack a year ago to the day of my visit, that razed the main museum site to the ground.

8. Share a museum selfie?

I hate taking selfies, but since they’ve become so popular I was persuaded to take one with the Horniman Walrus – just awful…

Since then I’ve taken a lot of selfies, and thankfully I’ve managed to look a bit less smug in those…

9. If time and money were not an issue, which museum in the world would you most like to visit?

As someone with a soft spot for Smilodon it would have to be the Page Museum!

10. Which museum do you think more people should know about?

The Horniman is a pretty small museum that does some pretty big things, but I know that outside the museum sector we’re not as well known as we could be. That said, I love the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL and the Natural History Museum in Dublin – two of my favourite places that shockingly few people seem to know about!

I do think that all museums deserve to be known about though, which is why I’ve been working hard with colleagues at the Natural Sciences Collections Association (NatSCA) and a variety of partner organisations (like the NHM and Linnean Society) to get a better idea of what museums are out there that hold natural science collections. At the moment the project is in its early days, but we’ve developed a crowdsourced map of UK natural history collections that you can see – and add to – on the NatSCA collections pages.

11. What’s the oddest search term that has led people to your blog?

“Rat poo”. It’s a surprisingly common search term too, with almost 400 people finding the site through some variation on that theme. I suppose that’s what happens if you show people pictures of rat poo though…

On that somewhat unsavoury note I will pass on the baton to some more museum bloggers:

Here are my questions for Jake, Claire and Russell:

1. Who are you and what do you blog about?
2. Why do you blog about museums?
3. And which post on your blog was the hardest to write?
4. Which is your favourite museum?
5. Do you think you’ll still be interested in museums in 20 years time?
6. What is your earliest museum memory?
7. What was the last museum you visited and what did you see?
8. Share a museum selfie?
9. If you could build a museum, what kind would it be?
10. What is the most popular post on your blog?
11. What’s the oddest search term that has led people to your blog?

And here’s what you have to do:

Answer the eleven questions – you can adapt them a little to fit your blog.

Include the BEST BLOG image in your post, and link back to the person who nominated you (that would be me, or this blog post).

Devise eleven new questions – or feel free to keep any of these ones here if you like them – and pass them on to how ever many bloggers you would like to.