This week I have a skull for you to have a go at identifying that has been submitted by Dr Ben Swift. Any idea what species this belongs to?
I’ll be trying to get an identification on this specimen myself and I’m not the best at primates, so your suggestions and comments would be appreciated – let’s see if we can crowdsource an identification!
On Friday I gave you this skull to identify:
The animal it comes from is quite distinctive, with loads of character, so it’s no big surprise that so many of you managed to identify it.
So well done to Jake, Dave Godfrey, henstridgesj, Mieke Roth, Wouter van Gestel, Steven D. Garber and Crispin – this is indeed a Continue reading
This week I have a skull with character for you to identify. It will probably prove to be little challenge to some of you, but if you know what it is please try to use cryptic clues so you don’t spoil the game for others:
Put your thoughts below and I’ll be sure to make comments during the day. Enjoy!
On Friday I gave you this skull to have a go at identifying:
I didn’t do a very good job of responding to comments I’m afraid, as I was rather busy at day two of this year’s Natural Sciences Collections Association conference at the Yorkshire Museum. Nonetheless, you managed to work out what this specimen came from without any input from me.
Jake spotted that it was the skull of a big reptile, more importantly, a big reptile with heterodont dentition (meaning it’s teeth aren’t all the same shape). That narrowed down the possibilities considerably. From there henstridgesj, Wouter van Gestel and Barbara Powell came to the conclusion that this is the skull of a Continue reading
This week I have another interesting skull that came up during one of our recent reviews:
Any idea what animal this belonged to? You can put your suggestions below and I’ll do my best to reply, although I will be at the NatSCA conference today, so it will depend on the quality of internet access on my phone.
On Friday I gave you this previously misidentified specimen to have a go at identifying:
It turns out that you did a great job!
Jake and Mieke Roth immediately spotted that the skull belonged to a large turtle of some kind, henstridgesj narrowed it down to a fresh-water turtle and he and Steven D. Garber recognised that despite the large size, it wasn’t from one of the snapping turtles (which is what the original identification mistakenly had it as) and that it was more likely to be from one of the side-necked turtles. However, microecos went one better and managed to get a species identification for the specimen that agreed with the identification that our visiting reptile expert Dr Colin McCarthy who suggested Continue reading
This week I have an object that came up in one of the Bioblitz collections reviews at the Horniman recently. It’s a great specimen, but it was misidentified by the preparators when it was purchased back in 1937 and that identification had never been corrected. Any idea what it should have been labelled as?
You can put your suggestions, questions and observations below and I’ll do my best to reply. On Monday I’ll post the identification that our incredibly helpful specialist reviewer suggested, so you can see how you did. Good luck!
On Friday I gave you this somewhat odd object to identify:
My first thought when seeing it was Bowser from the Mario games:
This probably isn’t the worst place to start the identification, since the animal with this feature was clearly big, scaly and toothy. This was obviously in the minds of Barbara Powell and Wouter van Gestel, who reached the correct conclusion that this is the structure from the tip of the snout of an adult male Continue reading
On Friday I gave you a mystery skull from the forests of south Thailand to identify, courtesy of Mark Ribbands via William Vine:
When I first saw this skull I was immediately struck by its similarity to that of a Badger:
That badger-like quality (which Jake also noticed) got me thinking that it may belong to an Asian Hog Badger, but the skull length is 190mm, which is a bit too big even for a large adult Hog Badger and the unfused sutures, partially erupted canines and short muzzle make it pretty obvious that the skull comes from a very young animal (I talked about the characteristics of juvenile animals in a post a couple of years ago).
Jake recognised that the skull was from a juvenile, as did Wouter van Gestel, who went on to suggest a much larger carnivore, the Malayan Sun Bear. The other possibility would be the Asiatic Black Bear, but without comparable juvenile skulls of both it is hard to be sure which it is, but I’m pretty certain it is the skull of a bear and looking at the shape of the adult bear skulls I think the Sun Bear Helarctos malayanus Horsfield, 1825 is probably the most likely candidate.
Sun Bears are the smallest members of the bear family and are well adapted to climbing, which they do a lot of as they search for the insects, fruit and honey that make up most of their diet. Here’s a video of a Sun Bear cub putting those impressive climbing skills to the test:
Today marks the start of the Chinese Year of the Snake and tomorrow we start the Herpetology phase of our collections review at the Horniman. How very apt!
Here’s a specimen labelled ‘Boa Constrictor’ that came to light while we were preparing for the review that I thought you might like:
Have a very prosperous and healthy Year of the Snake!
This week I have an object for you that came through as an enquiry from Mark Ribbands via William Vine. It’s 190mm long and was found in the forest of South Thailand:
Any idea what it came from? As usual you can leave your suggestions below – I may not be able to respond during the day as I’m at a seminar on Natural Science Collections and the Law, but I’m sure that there will be some interesting discussion about this object from the regulars!
I came across this little Seahorse when sorting through some boxes the other day:
I love the translucence of the skeleton – it refracted the light from the LED on my phone beautifully for this photo.
I find the textured surface of a Crocodile skull quite fascinating, even in a small animal like this one:
Check out the indent in the upper jaw for the large tooth in the lower jaw. That’s the easy way to spot the difference between a Crocodile and an Alligator skull.
Some interesting things have been coming to light in the reviews going on at the Horniman. Here’s an object that our Anthropology review team uncovered and asked me to identify.
It looks a bit like a bird of prey with a gimp mask, but it’s actually a charm from Nigeria.
Fortunately, I’d just gone through our bird skull collection and I immediately recognised this becowled bird skull as being from a Lappet-faced Vulture, so it was an easy identification – particularly since the skull is 18cm long and from Africa, which helped narrow down the possibilities considerably!
Here’s the Anthropology specimen compared directly to our Natural History specimen, so you can see what would be under the leather:
We’re also in the middle of our first collections Bioblitz at the moment, so expect to see a lot of activity on the @HornimanReviews Twitter feed!
I’ve been running my mystery object for over three years now and I’ve decided to add another kind of post in order to share some of the odd and interesting objects that I come across as I work in the collections of the Horniman Museum.
To share these specimens I’ve chosen the name ‘Oddjects’ as a portmanteau of ‘Odd’ and ‘Objects’. Here’s the first:
This happens to be a Wolffish (Anarhichas sp.) specimen that was a mystery object back in 2010, but here I just want to use the specimen to capture the imagination and spark discussion rather than provide much in-depth interpretation.
What does this make you think of?
I hope you enjoy the Oddjects I plan to share – if you do I would heartily recommend also checking out the Twitter and Tumblr feeds for the Horniman’s collections review projects as they also share some great objects.
On Friday I gave you this bird skull to identify:
I thought it might prove a bit of a challenge, since it belongs to a bird that isn’t found in Europe or North America. However, the skull shape and size is quite unique and I was forgetting the impressive skills of the Zygoma readers, so it didn’t take too long for Barbara Powell, Wouter van Gestel (who I believe may be involved in SkullSite.com – one of my favourite web resources) and henstridgesj to narrow it down to the correct species.
This skull belongs to a member of the Cuculiformes, family Musophagidae (‘banana-eaters’) and to be specific it’s from a Continue reading
This week I have yet another bird skull from the collections I’m working on that I thought you might find interesting:
Any idea what this skull came from? As usual you can put your suggestions and questions below and I’ll do my best to reply during the day. Good luck!
On Friday I gave you this skull to identify:
It was pretty clear that it’s from a modern animal with a duck-like bill, so either a Platypus or a member of the Anatidae (the family containing ducks, geese and swans).
There are about 140 species within the Anatidae, so narrowing it down to species was the challenge. For me the main features that help identify this duck from all the other species were the concave profile and the width to length relationship of the bill, the shape of the lacrimal bones (the bits in front of the eyes) – with the supraorbital processes bordering the salt glands, and the shape of the palate – with its mid-point deflection and flare.
It seems that some of you spotted some of these features too, since henstridgesj, miekeroth and Barbara Powell came to very similar conclusions. This skull looks like it belonged to a Common Scoter Melanitta nigra (Linnaeus, 1758) and a female Common Scoter at that, since the males have a much more inflated bill than this specimen.
Female Common Scoter photographed by Hilary Chambers
Common Scoters are sea ducks that dive for small crustaceans, molluscs and sometimes fish. They are migratory birds and although there only a few hundred breeding the UK, there are larger flocks of visiting birds over the winter, although they’re hard to spot since they are usually a fair distance out to sea for much of the time.
This week I have a fairly straightforward skull that I had to identify recently:
Any idea what species of bird this skull belonged to? As usual, you can put your suggestions below and I’ll do my best to respond. Good luck!
On Friday I gave you this really tricky mystery object to identify:
Despite it being one of the hardest so far, Barbara Powell managed to not only work out what piece of morphology this specimen represents, but the species it came from. Remarkable skills Barbara!
These plates of bone fit together to make a ring like this:
You probably have a better chance of identifying the structure when it’s assembled like this and the tubular shape is characteristic of a particular order of birds. This is the sclerotic ring of an Continue reading
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