More mysterious morphology for you
I hope that you like it too
But there is a trick
The bone here is thick
And the beast might be rude, it’s true!
(What is it and what from? Answers must be in limerick form to count. Pilot scans explained in this post.)
This post is dedicated in memory of the late, great Professor Farish Jenkins, Jr; one of the best anatomists and functional morphologists ever. Excellent retrospectives here and here and here.
Aaaaaand here is the current scoreboard, as promised last time; starting from this post onwards–
RULES: 5 pts for correct, spot-on and FIRST right answer, 4 pts for very close or second, 3 pts for partly right or third in line with right answer, 2 pts for a good try, 1 pt consolation prize for just trying, or for a good joke!
If you post as “anonymous” name then it all goes into the same tomb of the unknown anatomist.
If you change your answer, you lose ~1 pt. Answers posted via Twitter, Facebook, email or whatever do not count! No appeals. I am a frigid dictator. 🙂
In order from top score to middling ones:
UPDATED WITH SCORES FROM THIS ROUND
Mark Robinson 4+4+1+1+4=14 (participation counts!) Hurrah for Mark! Still on top, but tied now!
Filippo 4+2+5+3=14 (when he plays, it pays!)
Heinrich Mallison 1+4+2+4+1=12
RH 5+3+1+3=12 (watch out Heinrich!)
Check out the 7-point Gang of Awesomeness:
Casey Holliday 2+5=7
Michael Doube (mdoube) 1+6=7
AnathKaSh 2+1+4=7
Jaime A Headden 3+1+3=7
PaoloV 3+4=7
Chris Thomas =5 (from outta nowhere!)
Olle Håstad =5 (come back, Olle!)
Chris K 2+3=5
hypnotosov 1+1+2+1=5
Henry Astley =5
220mya =5
Jason =5
Coherentsheaf =5
nick gardner =5
Diane Kelly =4
Thomas R Holtz, Jr =3
Carolyn Eadie DeBoer =3
brooke 1+2=3
Stu Pond 1+2=3
And in the still-in-the-running 2 pt sector: Alejandro Otero, vetanat, Jason Anderson, Joy Reidenberg, unknown anatomist(oh noes! don’t let them win!), Dave, Aldo Matteucci, Dan, Bruce J. Mohn, gingerest, John Collins.
Finally, the 1pt horde– keep trying! protohedgehog, mcarnall, rebecca fisher, edward ayton, Welmoed, heather, Jenn, palaeosam, Carol Robbins, Old Geezer, A Person, rjm, Robyn, Morgan, Fiver, Colleen, dobermunk, eotyrannus, Amber Alink, himmapaan, AnJaCo, David Hone, J Gentry, Federico “Dino” Degrange.
Hope is not lost! With a spot-on answer you can leap into the top 10 or even better. But point-scoring is now closed– I still, however, welcome any clever limericks!
What's In John's Freezer? 
First, bird; Second, it’s a big one; Third, terrestrial; Fourth, looks like it could be a ratite of some sort (moa, elephant bird, etc., you get the drift), but also dromornithid or mihirung! It doesn’t look gracile enough to be an anseriform dromornithid or the like, though, which brings me back to ratites. Knowing your fascination and love of elephants, I will guess Aepyornis maximus or a similar by elephant-bird-like species.
There once was a bird grown quite vast,
Long-legged but not very fast,
It ended up in a pot,
Coz it’s tarsometatarsus was squat,
And of the Moa that was the last.
There once was a bird from New Zealand
And not from its neighbour Van Diemen’s
It’s hindlimb was massive
It’s Emeus crassus
Māori used them in feeding
damn, Limerick …
I have no little love for bird feet,
but graviportal this one seems, and that’s neat;
not a dromornithid nor dinornithid it seems,
if my guess comes apart at the seams,
my guess for Aepyornis should give me the treat.
I was pondering (and getting quite flustered)
whether a solution to this could be mustered?
I’m probably miles out
but I’ll give it a shout
Is it Otis tarda (the Great Bustard)?
I’m gessing that it belongs to a bird, a Moa probably, and by the degree of fusion of the epiphyses I’m gessing that it was a young one (a subadult maybe?) … Sorry John but my english it is not quite enough yet to try a limerick! jejeje!
It’s an Emeus crassus foot bone.
The thing that it used to walk on.
But the Maori ate meat.
and found it’s taste sweet.
So now all the Moas are gone.
(Technically, it’s a tarsometatarsus, but that just didn’t flow as well)
Or. How about:
It’s a tarso-metatar-sus.
From an Emeus crassus named Gus.
It’ so hard to tell
the reason Gus fell.
But he sure wasn’t hit by a bus!
RH is in the glums
as too late to party she comes
it’s a ratite for sure
extinct and obscure
but would it taste good stewed with plums?
HIppos like to sleep in the river
when it comes to bad moods they deliver
be careful when boating
don’t even think about gloating
or you’ll get a big tooth for a sliver
Oh these are delightful!
Keep em coming, you’re leaving me crying!
Maybe everyone is wrong
It could be a whale’s dong
And hey you get points just for trying!
I’m not much of a poet and a timezone too late but I banged this out today anyway. It’s pretty ridiculous and 100% true, so enjoy. 🙂
“Mystery CT Slice Meets OEB 150”
There once was a kid from the states
who liked to sleep in kind of late
when she saw a CT game
she had to exclaim
“Ratite tarsometatarsus! First Rate!”
Her heart sunk deep as she noticed
before she woke many had posted
But she could still win
She thought with a grin
If only a story could be shared:
Prof Jenkins could be quite eccentric
the lectures were always dynamic
while describing pronation
he produced demonstration
as I sat taking notes in a panic
Charts on the board weren’t enough
Turns out he was up to mischief
He seemed to finish
but then with flourish
brought his shoe down right by my stuff
Students jumped, dropping pens to gawk
Without a pause, he brought down the chalk
drew the bones and muscles
turning limbs to pretzels
From using nice pants he didn’t balk
It was a lecture we all consider
world-class in the highest order
We’d recall with affection
learning about flexion
and the pre and post-axial border
But then he held up his chalk so pinky
and gave us a mischievous winky
looked me right in the eye
said “I will not deny,
My wife thinks this lecture is kinky!”
I love this, thanks! Definitely some extra points for effort and relevance.
There is still time left for some guessing
Tomorrow will come the confessing
So best make it quick
And use rhymes that are sick
Or miss out on the freezer’s blessing
won’t sure name a thing not known
if that’d be Moa or Aepy o’ dawn
but sure that MT stubby looks
and ostrich not for it’d have two hooks
will name it not and feel a clown
but i’m not sure of a flightless critter
as i can see in my mind well glitter
oh those birds of aerial life
that back in youth I cleaned by knife
after my cat brought them from yonder
still that thickness good John mentioned
surely not with foolin’ intention
has me say “a ratite that is!”
or just venture to say “Otis”
and wait here the name in tension
if i may mention out of slight shame
I had not seen Stu chose the name
of Otis tarda as his choice
and now I hope that with shared voice
we’ll get victorious through the game
🙂
Pretty much everyone got it right that this is a foot, and specifically it is a tarsometatarsus (sole bones; 3 fused metatarsals and some distal tarsals etc.), pertaining to a bird (groans of misery from John Collins!).
The answer of Otis tarda (Kori Bustard) is interesting; I wish I had a scanned/frozen one! I do not, though. And if one looks at pictures of that bird, it has a long, thin tarsometatarsus, or at least moreso than the bone above: http://goo.gl/CmItz (shockingly, I cannot find a good picture of an Otis tarda skeleton online!).
Like filippo mentions, an ostrich is not the answer because it would have only 2 condyles at the end of the bone for the two toes. And an ostrich has a VERY long, thin tarsometatarsus (TMT), as do emus and many other ratites. More groans.
So we’re left with some sort of large, strange, possibly extinct bird. And extinct is the right way to go. But only recently extinct. The abbreviated TMT is also characteristic of a few groups, especially island birds that have for some reasons become less cursorial (long-legged; maybe fast). Some moas, such as Dinornis maximus (one of the more famous ones) have a nice long TMT bone. So this helps us begin to narrow things down; it is not one of those.
Then my hint of “rude” really helped several people. Synonyms for rude would include abrupt, abusive, bad-mannered, barbarian, barbaric, barbarous, blunt, boorish, brusque, brutish, cheeky, churlish, coarse, crabbed, crude, curt, discourteous, graceless, gross, gruff, ignorant, illiterate, impertinent, impolite, impudent, inconsiderate, insolent, insulting, intrusive, loutish, low, obscene, offhand, peremptory, raw, savage, scurrilous, short, surly, uncivil, uncivilized, uncouth, uncultured, uneducated, ungracious, unmannerly, unpolished, unrefined, vulgar and wild (thanks, thesaurus!), and, and…
And… crass. So now the answer becomes easier. It is Emeus crassus, the Eastern Moa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Moa
Wonky wide feet! And as PaoloV and others note, probably easy prey for hungry original Newzealanders.
Scores are now being updated above. A bonus point for everyone that gave a limerick, and some extra bonus points for particularly good ones. Hooray for the winners, and better luck next time to the others– don’t despair!
Michael Doube (mdoube previously) wins… you clever kiwi, you! He had an advantage of having seen the CT scan data himself, from our recent paper in J Anatomy, but also won because he was quick on the draw!
(paper is here– http://bit.ly/U3oBl2)
Not really fair, was it, being a bit closer to the material than your other readers. But I’ll take the points all the same 😉 History shows I have no clue about some of the other quizzes – I need every point I can get!
How about Haiku next time?
Yes, you dirty dawg! 🙂 Haiku has been done before here, but there may be an opportunity for a sonnet, ghazal, sestina or jintishi…
Then sonnet: it was good enough for Shakespeare…
[…] we have a scoreboard now, and rules for scoring. See here. Regular points for this round– Xmas is over, […]