This week’s mystery object is a guest specimen from regular contributor Andy Taylor, FLS, chosen for its seasonal colours:
Any ideas what these living party decorations might be?
As ever, you can pop your questions, thoughts, and suggestions in the comments below – no need for cryptic clues this time around as it’s a tricky one!
With that seasonal conundrum to consider, I wish you all a wonderful holiday weekend!
Last week I gave you this specimen from the Dead Zoo to have a go at identifying:
It was a bit of a tricky one, since the specimen has been sectioned down the midline and the bone of the maxilla has been removed to show the roots of the teeth.
However, many of you were stuck at home and had a chance to get into detail in the comments. There were some fantastic answers where the features were discussed, so I think it’s well worth sharing some of them:
Rémi said:
We are confined at home, so we searched together with my 5 years old daughter. Here are our thoughts :
– foramen magnum in a downward position, low-crown teeth, bony part behind orbite, orbites facing toward the front, so we are dealing with a primate
– but a special primate because the orbites are open to the temporal fossa. And also it has a long snout with the orbites below the nasal bone. The orbites are not big enough for a nocturnal monkey. And also the very special lower incisors in horizontal position, also know as teeth-comb. We think it is a lemur-like animal.
The brain case is not round enough for a Lorisidae. We could not find pictures of all the lemur and sportive lemur species. But we saw the picture of a skull of the cat-ish one and it fits very well.
Then
steveryder said:
Second thoughts: we cannot quite see this but in my own notes on lemur;
Canine often incisiform and procumbent, arranged laterally with incisors in toothcomb, creating array of 3.
Ist mandibular premolar often caniniformThis would then be 3 premolar, 3 molar and therefore not Varecia but more probably Eulemur….
and…
katedmonson said:
While some lemurs don’t have upper incisors, this one has small peg-like ones. A Ruffed lemur (Varecia variegate), while having the same dentition, has more of an orbital thickness.
Since the skull has been dremeled out, I am not sure how much of a diastema was between the canine and upper premolars. If there was one there, I will vote for a Ring tailed lemur (Lemur catta), female, because of the smoother occipital and more slender lower mandible. The size fits as well.
These comments all highlight features of the skull that belong to lemurs, but there is a little confusion caused by the bone removed from around the teeth.
Ring-tailed Lemur was the most popular answer, but the diastema (or gap) between the upper canine tooth and the first upper premolar that katedmonson mentioned would not be present on this specimen, even if the bone was still there. Also, that lower first premolar has a fairly simple conical/triangular shape with just one cusp – which makes it caniniform, as mentioned by steveryder.
Rather than the Ring-tailed Lemur, this is the skull of a Ruffed Lemur Varecia variegata Kerr, 1792. I think it’s probably from a female or young animal (or both) as it’s more gracile than some other specimens I’ve seen. This accounts for the reduced orbital thickness, slender mandible and smoother occipital mentioned by katedmonson.
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Black and white ruffed lemur by Charles J Sharpe, 2018
I should say, on Twitter Michael English and Gabriella Κογντογριδη also recognised this as a Ruffed Lemur. Worth mentioning that if you use Twitter and you like identifying skulls (well OBVIOUSLY you like skulls if you’re reading this) then it’s well worth checking out the #GuessTheSkull hashtag started by Yara Haridy.
A new mystery object next week – stay safe and healthy!
Last week I gave you this mystery bone to identify:
As I suspected, it was simultaneously easy and difficult: easy because it’s clearly an os penis or baculum; difficult because it can be hard to narrow down the species to which a baculum belongs without having specimens for comparison. For some reason people can be funny about penis bones and, despite the fact that male animals tend to be over-represented in museums, the baculum will often have been removed or not included in skeletal mounts.
That said, Steph came closest, getting the right family with the clue:
Bac to the bear-minimum I would guess?
If you remember one of my past posts I showed an image of the baculum mounted on the skeleton of a Giant Panda in Berlin (more about this below):
You can see that, although it differs slightly with a bit of a dip towards the tip, it’s rather similar in structure to the mystery object.
Oddly however, it appears that this baculum on the Berlin Panda specimen has been switched for that of a different bear species. Pandas have a very distinctive reduced baculum with wings (see below), that looks nothing like this, which is more similar to the os penis of a Spectacled Bear (or possibly a Polar Bear at a push).
The mystery object is actually the baculum of a Sloth Bear Melursus ursinus (Shaw, 1791).
N.B. note that the writer of this label couldn’t quite bring themselves to write the full word “penis”
In future, should you ever find yourself with an unidentified bear penis on your hands, I suggest taking a look at this handy figure by Abella et al. 2013¹:
Baculum in laterial view of: A Helarctos malayanus; B Ursus thibetanus; C Tremarctos ornatus; D Ursus americanus; E Melursus ursinus; F Ursus arctos; G Ursus maritimus; H Indarctos arctoides; I Ventral view of the Baculum of Ailuropoda melanoleuca; J Dorsal view of the baculum of Ailuropoda melanoleuca.
So in answering one mystery object we’ve uncovered a far bigger mystery – how did the Berlin Panda end up with the wrong penis?
Last week I gave you this lovely little shell to try your hand at identifying:
It’s a specimen that was given to the Dead Zoo recently by a regular contributor to the collections and it’s particularly interesting because it might be the first record of this species in Ireland (this is currently being researched for publication by the donor, so I won’t give away too much detail).
What I will say is that this is one of the reasons species identifications can be very important, since our understanding of how species move around has implications for various aspects of society and you don’t want to make decisions based on bad information. If you don’t know what I mean by that, I’ll give you some examples.
Zebra mussels arrived in Ireland in the 1990s from the Black and Caspian Seas and they’ve bred prolifically. They altered freshwater ecosystems by filtering out plankton that other species depend on for survival and they form hard-to-remove clusters that foul boat hulls and block drainage and cooling pipes. They’re in North America too, and in 15 years they are estimated to have cost hydroelectric and water treatment plants somewhere in the region of $267 million to remove or defend against. It’s cheaper to defend against them than to remove them and fix the problems they cause, so you need to know what you’re dealing with.
Retrieval of zebra mussel-encrusted Vector Averaging Current Meter near Michigan City, IN. Lake Michigan, June 1999. Photo by M. McCormick, NOAA, Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory
Signal crayfish are another freshwater invasive species, this time from America, that have caused havoc in Europe because they are linked to the dreaded Crayfish plague (I kid you not). The American crayfish are resistant to this fungal(ish) disease, but they act as hosts and carriers. Ireland is the last country in Europe to be free of the invasive crayfish, but are constantly alert to the dangers they can pose to the native species.
Signal crayfish by David Perez, 2009
I should say that the many introduced species aren’t actually all that problematic. I’ve not heard that Little Owls (introduced by the Victorians for the cuteness) or Ring-necked Parakeets (escapees from aviaries) have had any significant impact in the UK. Still, it’s interesting to know when species turn up somewhere, especially if it reflects a change in the environment that may have other impacts.
Little Owl by Arturo Nikolai, 2008
Noble False Widow spiders were a harmless addition to the UK fauna back in 1879, that were quietly tucked down in Devon until the changing climate gave them the conditions to move further north. Now they’re up as far as Liverpool thanks to our warmer winters. Similar patterns are seen for a variety of Mediterranean species, demonstrating how we can track changes in our environment by keeping track of where and when certain species are found – but if you don’t get the species right, you don’t have good data. That’s part of why we have museums in the first place, to lodge ‘voucher’ specimens of recorded species so identifications can be double checked in the future.
Noble False Widow
Of course, I’m sure that you all appreciate the importance of getting identifications correct, since here you are reading my blog which tends to be all about identification! For those of you who recognised the mystery object as a scallop of some sort I tip my hat, but to Daniel Jones I offer congratulations – this is indeed a Calico Scallop Argopecten gibbus (Linnaeus, 1767) which is, as Joe Vans suggested, a juvenile. Normally these are found on the Atlantic coast of America. Well done! I’ll let you know more about the specimen when the paper is published.
More interesting dead stuff to come next Friday…
This week I thought I’d give you a beautiful bird skin from the Horniman collections to have a go at identifying:
Any idea what this colourful critter might be?
You can leave your suggestions in the comments box below – but please try to be cryptic if you find it easy, so other people get a chance to work it out themselves. Enjoy!
On Friday we had this skull submitted by Dr Ben Swift for identification:
Now this is quite obviously a primate, as it has a bony ring around the orbit, a bony back wall to the orbit and just eight incisors as opposed to the twelve that forms the basal condition for mammals. The teeth also tell us that this is an Old World Monkey (Cercopithecidae), since these primates only have eight premolars instead of the twelve you find in the New World Monkeys (Platyrrhini). The small canines suggest that this is the skull of a female.
From there it starts getting a bit more difficult. The fairly small size of the specimen ruled out a few genera, but the main features that helped narrow down the possibilities were the very flat face, the heavy bony rings around the orbits, the flaring of the zygomatic arches (cheekbones) and the short and rounded braincase. Effectively the only way to consider these features is to look at a lot of comparative specimens (the excellent Mammalian Crania Photographic Archive proved very useful for this).
After a lot of consideration I found myself in agreement with the suggestion of something from the genus Continue reading
On Friday I asked for your help with identifying this object:
There were a few interesting suggestions from beaks to bladders, but so far nothing really corresponds with the structure of this specimen. It’s very weird.
It looks like it’s probably from something aquatic, perhaps the ossified swim bladder of a fish, but I’m by no means sure of that.
I will see if I can read the notes written on the specimen under a UV light, but for now I have to admit that I am still stumped. Please let me know if you recognise what it is!
[N.B. from the discussion and links in the comments below, it emerges that this is the hyperostotic spine from the anal fin of a fish]
This week I have another genuine mystery object for you to have a go at identifying. I found a pair of legs in the collection and although I can think of a few things that they don’t come from, I’m a bit stumped as to what they did come from. Here’s one to give you an idea of what they look like:
Any suggestions would be appreciated!
This week I thought I’d give you another object that I had to identify from a mixed box of specimens:
Any idea what this skull might have belonged to?
You can put your questions, comments and suggestions below and I’ll do my best to respond. Good luck!
On Friday I gave you this object from the collections of the Horniman Museum to identify:
The specimen had lost its label at some point in the past, so I had to identify it myself and was hoping to get your opinion on what it might be.
When I first saw it I noticed an odd scar running diagonally across the top of the cranium, which made me wonder if it was some kind of marine bird with an odd salt glad. Then I realised that the scar indicated something else entirely, which gave me the clue I needed to make the identification.
It seems that most of you also noticed the scar and came to similar conclusions, so 23thorns, cackhandedkate, Ric Morris, Jake and Steven D. Garber all recognised it as a woodpecker of some sort and given the length of the skull rachel and henstridgesj arrived at the same conclusion about species as I did, which is the 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!
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
Apologies for the somewhat tardy answer to the mystery object that I gave you on Friday. Not only is it tardy, it’s not really an answer, as I still haven’t ruled out all of the possible options as to what this skull is from:
Now I’m quite happy to say it’s from a member of the crow family or corvid of some sort, but there are quite a lot of corvids out there. My first thought was Jackdaw Corvus monedula (Linnaeus, 1758), which is also what Jake thought. However, when compared to the Jackdaw on the Skullsite the bone between the eyes looks too narrow.
Barbara Powell very helpfully provided some measurements from Jackdaws in her collection, that make me think that this may still be a Jackdaw, but I have reservations, since there are several other corvids with skulls in the same size range as this specimen (6.9 cm long). The Magpie Pica pica (Linnaeus, 1758) is one that was suggested by several people (biologycurator and Leigh) and henstridgesj suggested it could be one of the North American Jays.
The big problem here is that there aren’t many features of the skull of the corvids that help distinguish them from each other, apart from the size and the bill shape. However, Magpies and Jackdaws are a bit too similar in these features. Other characters may be able to help, such as the shape of the bones of the palate (which I think favours the Magpie), but without a large sample size for comparison it is hard to tell what variation is due to species differences and what is due to individual differences.
Given that this specimen is from the King’s or Chelsea College collection, which contains material from around the World, we can’t even rule out species from other countries. All of this makes identification a bit too uncertain, so for now I will simply keep the identification to ‘corvid’ and make a note of the various species it is most likely to be. Better to be uncertain than to be wrong.
Thanks for your help!
Once again I have a genuine mystery object for you to identify this Friday. I have been going through some of the material from the old King’s College Collection in an effort to identify some material with no data that would be suitable for the Horniman’s handling collection.
I found this bird skull that I think would be ideal – I think I know what it is, but I need to make sure that I’m not mistaken and that it isn’t an important or rare species. I will check the identification myself and I will see if you all come to the same conclusions as me about what this is:
Please leave your comments and suggestions below and let’s see what we come up with!
On Friday I gave you another skull to identify from a box of unlabelled material dating from 1974:
At first glance it looks quite similar to the skull of a small dog or fox, but the muzzle area seems a bit short, the braincase too small and the teeth aren’t quite right for a canid – in fact the teeth look more like those of a mustelid (as Jake pointed out). However, mustelids tend to have quite broad and blocky skulls and this one seems a bit elongate and gracile.
Clare P made a very good suggestion when she suggested the Asian Palm Civet Paradoxurus hermaphroditus, although this animal is somewhat smaller than the species that this specimen came from. Size aside, the dentition matches pretty well (if you can work out which tooth sockets belong to each tooth):
So it looks like this is the skull of a viverrid. There are still lots of candidates out there and location could help narrow down possible species, but without any labels it can be hard to work out locality information. However, last week’s object was from the same collection and it was an African species, suggesting that Africa would be a good place to start looking for a species match.
Jamie Revell did just that when he suggested the Giant Forest Genet Genetta victoriae, which is a viverrid of about the right size from Africa. Although I already thought I knew what the specimen was, I took Jamie’s suggestion very seriously, as I hadn’t considered that particular species and it fit with most of the features of the specimen.
In the end an online French viverrid identification resource I’d not seen before provided me with the information I needed to exclude the Giant Forest Genet. Mainly it came down to whether the premaxillary bones made contact with the frontal bones – they do in the Giant Forest Genet, but they don’t in this specimen. Also, the area where the temporalis muscle attached is too narrow in this specimen.
In light of these observations and with reference to specimens in the Horniman’s collections (including one that I used as a mystery object a year ago) I am fairly confident in identifying this as Continue reading
On Friday I was in rather a rush as I was involved in co-organising this year’s Natural Science Collections Association (or NatSCA) conference. It was a very enjoyable (if hectic) few days of natural history nerdery, but left me limited time to select an object from the FMO. I took my opportunity at the drinks reception at the Grant Museum of Zoology where I tried out the camera on my new phone to get an image of this specimen:
Now it was a fairly easy one to identify as the skull of these animals is very distinctive. Nonetheless, if you haven’t seen the skull of one of these animals before it is a bit of an oddity, with that spike in the face and the apparently strongly protruding maxilla and mandible (which is actually due to unusually elevated frontals). Continue reading
This week I’ve been rather swamped with co-organising the Natural Science Collections Association conference, so I haven’t had much time to think of a good mystery object from the Horniman’s collections. However, here is a nice (if somewhat distinctive) specimen from the excellent Grant Museum of Zoology for you to identify:
Any idea what it is?
You can put your comments below and I’ll do my best to respond, as the opportunity arises. Best of luck!
This week I’m giving you a genuine mystery object – it was found in the collections without any kind of label or identification:
I’m pretty sure I know what it’s from, but I’d really appreciate your thoughts, in case I’m missing something. Cheers!
Last week’s bird was so popular I thought I’d give you another to identify this week. It’s a bit harder than last week’s Kookaburra and I’ll be very impressed indeed if anyone gets it to species, but I’m sure many of you will manage to identify it to family level.
I will be teaching young folk about skulls and mermaids at Camp Quest in Somerset this Friday, so I might not get a chance to respond to comments, although I’ll do my best.
Good luck!
Today I’m giving you an Anthropological mystery object to make up for the recent dominance of skulls. So, any idea what this is, where it’s from and what it’s made of?
As usual, you can put your thoughts below and I’ll do my best to respond. Good luck!
Zygoma 