Without further ado, what’s up with this specimen from The Freezers? What is it, what animal etc?
(admin note, 28 Oct 2012: Mystery Dissections 2-3 do not exist, mysteriously. At the time, in the jumbled freezers of my mind, they corresponded to Mystery CT Slice(1) and Mystery CT Slice 2. But we can pretend that MD2-3 are just an eternal mystery of this blog, subject of numerous conspiracy theories that you are welcome to expound upon!)
Waiting for you to enlighten, I’m afraid. Though I almost feel as though I’m going to kick myself once it’s revealed.
Hmmm. Lots of very round, white eggs in an oviduct? A relatively small body, and I can’t see any hair or fur. Is it some sort of largish reptile, like a skink or a monitor lizard?
Looks like pre-shell egg yolks in a largeish reptile.
The skin in the lower right is slightly out of focus but doesn’t appear to have any fur, feathers, or scales. I’m going with unfertilised eggs in the ovary of a shark of some sort.
Burmese python ovary.
As usual, some solid and well-informed guesses. The answer is… (eggroll, er drumroll), as Bruce says, unshelled eggs in a large reptile– an Australian freshwater croc (Crocodylus johnstoni). We were quite surprised to run across these during dissection, although the animal was 180cm in total length and hence of a size appropriate for sexual maturity. According to http://www.angelfire.com/mo2/animals1/crocodile/afc.html , 4-21 eggs are laid; depending on how you count these in the pic, this animal might have been at the upper end of that range. The eggs were 657g, from a 20.2kg animal (total), so 3% body mass even when incompletely calcified; not bad!
Thanks for playing another round of Mystery Dissection! I’ll try to keep it going.
I Like this but I want to know what animal is this?
See my comment above yours; Australian freshwater croc (Crocodylus johnstoni)
These are turtle eggs, ive seen those before.