Tag Archives for mystery object

Friday mystery object #160 answer

On Friday I gave you this distinctive looking bird skull to identify:

On Twitter and Facebook there were incorrect suggestions of Toucan and Flamingo, but in the comments here Ric Morris dropped a heavy hint at the correct species identification within 6 minutes of the mystery object being posted, with hestridgesj and 23thorns also getting the right species a little later.

This skull was listed in the Horniman’s 1934 Natural History register as Corvultur abyssinicus, a species name that to the best of my knowledge has never been scientifically recognised. But the name suggests a vulture-like corvid from Abyssinia – or what is now called Egypt. This information plus the distinctive size and shape of the skull and bill led me to surmise that the specimen is from a  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #159 answer

On Friday morning I gave you this skull to identify:

Then at lunchtime I added this image of the underside of the skull to make the task a bit more manageable:

Before the second image was added most people were thinking that the specimen was some sort of large rodent due to the pair of incisors in the mandible and the skull shape reminiscent of a Beaver. However, the second image shows the teeth in the upper jaw, clearly showing way too many incisors for the specimen to be a rodent, not to mention the fact it has canines and caniform premolars.

At this point it became clear that the skull was from a Marsupial and the identifications started getting a lot closer to the correct species. Several people suggested that this skull belonged to a Brush Tailed Possum and it’s easy to see why – they have very similar skulls. As you might expect this species and the Brush Tailed Possum are in the same family (Phalangeridae). The main visible differences are that the Brush Tailed Possum has a narrower skull with a less well developed zygomatic region (cheek bone). They also tend to have a less well-developed caniform first premolar.

As we’ve seen before these small differences in skull shape and size can be due to differences within a species – perhaps due to age or sex of the animal. This means that there may be a chance the the specimen is a Brush Tailed Possum, but the similarity between the dental configuration of this specimen taken in consideration with the slight differences in skull shape suggest to me that this is a  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #158 answer

On Friday I gave you this small bird skull to identify:

I though that the small size might lead you into thinking it was from a songbird – and there were a couple of you who were caught out by my cheap trick, with suggestions of Meadow Lark and Dunnock.

However, as you’ve probably worked out, it isn’t actually a songbird skull. Rhea misread the scale as being inches rather than centimetres and thought that this was a Chicken skull – which although wrong is in the right family (just a lot bigger!). The distinctive profile than Rhea spotted, combined with the small size meant that Ric Morris, palaeosam and Robin all managed to recognise this as the skull of a  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #157 answer

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 region highlighted

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 →

Friday mystery object #157

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!

Friday mystery object #156 answer

On Friday I gave you this mystery object to identify:

It proved a bit more tricky that I had expected, but given its fragmentary nature I suppose I should’ve expected it to pose a challenge.

As it turns out henstridgesj managed to identify it on the basis of it looking like roadkill – an unusual diagnostic feature, but in this case it was spot on. Robin, biologycurator and Jamie Revell also agreed with the identification of  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #155 answer

On Friday I gave you this mystery skull to identify:

It’s not particularly complete, but the bill is very distinctive so most of you got the correct identification. Well done to Ric Morris, Barbara Powell, Jake, biologycurator, henstridgesj and Robin for spotting that this is the skull of a  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #154 answer

On Friday I gave you this very distinctive object to identify:

As I suspected, everyone correctly worked out it was a half mandible from a Sirenian – probably a Manatee. So well done to Barbara Powell, henstridgesj, Robin, Ric Morris, Rhea, rachel, Jake, Andrea and Jamie Revell for getting the main identification.

Of course, it got a bit more difficult when it came to making a species level identification, as is often the case. There are three well recognised species of Manatee – the West African, West Indian and Amazonian. There is also the Dwarf Manatee, which is a potential species in its own right or perhaps subspecies of the Amazonian Manatee.

Several people plumped for the Amazonian species or the Dwarf Manatee based on the fact that the jaw doesn’t look robust enough for the other species. However, this mandible is from a juvenile, so that was a bit misleading. Based on the hook of the coronoid process (the highest bit of the lower jaw where the temporalis muscle attaches) and the angle of the mandibular symphyseal region (the bit where the two halves of the lower jaw would have joined together) I think this is most likely to be what Barbara Powell first suggested, the  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #154

This week I have a specimen that is pretty distinctive for you to have a go at identifying, so it should prove pretty straightforward for anyone who has seen one of these before:

Of course, if you haven’t seen one of these before it may be a bit more of a challenge!

You can put your suggestions, observations and questions below and I’ll do my best to reply. Good luck!

Friday mystery object #153 answer

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 →

Friday mystery object #153

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!

Friday mystery object #152 answer

Apologies for the late posting  today – I’m on holiday and haven’t had a chance to post until now.

On Friday I gave you this object to identify:

It was immediately recognised as a primate by everyone, which is unsurprising, given the very characteristic enclosed bony orbits and set of four incisors in the premaxilla and mandible. The teeth were also commented upon by henstridgesj, who recognised that this is an Old World Monkey (Cercopithecidae), with two premolars on each side in both the maxilla and mandible.

Some people might argue with the classification of this specimen as a member of the Cercopithecidae, since the lack of a tail suggests that it’s an Ape of some sort, but the Hominoidea form a smaller clade within the wider Cercopithecidae clade, which means that this is both an Ape and an Old World Monkey.

The kind of Ape is a more tricky question, although the shape of the teeth and the size of the braincase in relation to the facial region rules out any adult Great Apes (Hominidae) – it could be a juvenile, but the degree of fusion of the bones says not. That leaves the ‘Lesser Apes’ (Hylobatidae) or Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #151 answer

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 →