umzoology:

Ursus americanus 

One of the groundskeepers that I’ve gotten to know over the years contacted me a while ago after he found a large black bear (Ursus americanus) skull and skeleton while on a hike in the woods.  He was wondering if he could bring it in so I could show him how to process the skull, and of course I agreed.  (He actually brought it in yesterday while we were filming, so there’s a good chance you’ll get to see my initial interaction with this skull). 

I find this particular bear skull to be unequivocal.  It is by far the oldest specimen of a bear that I have ever seen, and I would estimate its age well into its 20s based off of the severe wear on its teeth, the lack of visible suture lines, pronounced bone growth from muscle scarring, and by the wear on the root of its upper left canine despite the advanced periodontal disease — meaning it was chewing on that tooth for years even after the root rotted away.  It is truly a beautiful thing to me.  There is also extensive bone loss in the mandible and maxillary bones; so thin in some places that you can see through it, especially where it’s pocked with holes.  There’s a small incisor embedded into the front of the mandible, for whatever reason.  In addition to these faciomaxillary nuances we also observed that the occipital is unevenly worn when comparing one condyle to the other, which makes me insanely curious about the state of the rest of the skeleton (especially the wear on the C1).  I hope to go out soon with some GPS coordinates to locate the rest of the skeleton!  Perhaps that could be a fun Brain Scoop episode!?

biomedicalephemera:

American Crow - Corvus brachyrhynchos

Both the American crow and the common raven (Corvus corax) are widespread, highly adaptable, and have loud and distinctive calls. Their conspicuous and ubiquitous nature made them two of the most commonly identified species in cemeteries, graveyards, and other areas associated with death and despair.

Unfortunately, the specter of death seems to have caught up to the crows - since 1999, the population of crows has dropped by over 45%, thanks to West Nile Virus. Despite the adaptability of the birds, they’re very susceptible to many avian diseases. As such, they’re considered a bioindicator (or sentinel) species - when they start dying in larger numbers, it indicates the presence of WNV or another avian disease in the area, and other birds will probably start dying soon.

The living animals of the world. C. J. Cornish, 1902.

emilyfundis:

Iguana, 2012

Watercolor pencil and graphite

umzoology:

Historical Collections of the Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum 

I’ve determined Friday’s Freak of the Week was a three-way tie with athankyou’s guess as the cervical vertebrae of a whale, somuchscience’s deduction that it was some type of cetacean (not a minke, however), and a valiant effort on pingaspie’s part to narrow it down to the same.  How rude of me to publish a FotW without I myself even knowing the true answer!  Dave said it’s from some type of cetacean, most likely a dolphin, but was unaware of its origins.  In my defense, it’s not as though we have a lot of whales in Montana and our comparative collection representing that order is quite small.  So, congratulations! and my apologies for not giving a solid answer; forgive me?! 

Our latest exhibit highlighting the historical collections of our museum opened last Thursday on the first floor of our building, Health Sciences.  We put in a lot of work over the last three months to get this together, but probably would have completed it much sooner if we had an adequate budget (and if I wasn’t the only fulltime employee) — museum exhibits are incredibly difficult!  The purple frames around the photographs were all cut by hand, as well as the labels (it’s heavy mat board); we had to make photocopies of original labels, put UV-protective strips on the lights — and on top of that find a way to hang and display everything (the wall is thin carpet-like fabric covering basically concrete).  That doesn’t even include the time to research the items and write cohesive descriptions for everything!  I’m extremely proud of the way it turned out, and will be photographing individual aspects of this exhibit over the next coming weeks in order to go into further discussion about these very significant items and those unique individuals which collected them. 

If you exclude the cost of reproducing the original historical photographs (courtesy of the Archives at the Mike and Maureen Mansfield Library, and cost about $135 [that was a big ‘oops’ on my part — we were not anticipating that high cost and if we could we would probably do it differently next time], the entire exhibit was put together with about $30.   It took a lot of extra time, but we did it!  

clorinart:

Two studies of a hyena skull from the Smithsonian Natural History museum. I found all my spring break photos that I took specifically for this purpose, finally! So hopefully no more random photos I dicked from someone else to redraw.

First time, I feel like I went too light and didn’t quite grasp the shape very well.

I think I did slightly better with the second time, esp. since I tried to deepen values.

Any critiques would be welcomed!

moshita:

54 human skulls

o! i use these for my skull studies

emersonfulk:

LARGE pastel drawing of a skull (of some sort) found along the banks of Kentucky Lake. It’s done on cotton-rag paper (stonehenge).