…a daily picture of anatomy! And today it is two pictures, tra-la-lee!
Welcome back to Freezermas! And HAPPY DARWIN DAY! Last year our whole lab got involved in DD2012, but this blog was just a twinkling in my keyboard back then. This year it was a more mellow, somber occasion for DD2013. But Heinrich Mallison of the dinosaurpalaeo blog took part, and took photos (all credits go to him), and the result kicked ass and took names. Bring it on!
Here is Darwin amidst a selection of greatest hits from my bone collection; post-freezer denizens. How many can you identify? Have a go in the comments below. A few should be quite familiar to blog followers… More about these bones later this week. Incidentally, Darwin is standing on a Kistler forceplate. So biomechanics afficionados can geek out about this, too.
And here I am hamming it up again. Give it a rest, John! But ’tis merely a humble offering to The Master. I’m sure he’d appreciate it. Any guesses what it is?
Happy Freezermas! Sing it: “On the second day of Freezermas, this blo-og gave to me: one tibiotarsus, a-and two silly pictures with Chucky D!”
What's In John's Freezer? 
awwwww! how cool is that! 😉
the easy ones: a nile croc skull ( but of course!), an elephant foot, a bovine hoof
not bovine, giraffe?
Cervical vertebra of something big. Coolest cervical vertebra would be giraffe but I’m not sure this one is big enough. Massive scapula must be from an elephant. Smaller scapula, pelvis, maybe equine? Avian ribcage and sternum with keel next to Darwin’s right foot. Humerus with big deltoid tuberosity… hmmm, can’t quite place it. Or is it the weirdest femur I ever saw? Parasagittal section through a skull with some pretty massive sinuses – rhino?
cocodrile, giraffe and elephant
Golly Mieke, it really is the quick and the dead around here!
Here’s what I think I can see:
a large humerus, poss Elephas maximus;
elephant right forefoot;
giraffe pelvis;
the thing near Dr D’s right foot looks bird-y prob vertebrae, ribs, and keel (or it might be a new type of xenomorph);
giraffe cervical;
skull of Crocodylus sp. prob C. niloticus;
up on the right are two scapulae from different large mammals, the top one poss from some sort of rhino and the lower prob Elephas maximus;
a weird-ass femur betw them, say from a hippo;
a right slice of skull – I wanted to say elephant but the teeth aren’t right so I’ll say white rhino;
cloven hoof, some sort of deer;
and the weird-looking thing to the left of the hoof also looks bird-y so I’ll say a pelvis of a large bird, prob ostrich.
Femur is rhino I think, with that great big crest
Yeah, I think you’re right.
https://whatsinjohnsfreezer.com/2012/09/21/world-rhino-day2012/
I can see an elephant foot, elephant humerus, a crocodile skull, mystery giraffe pelvis, flying bird pelvis, giraffe cervical vertebra, emu pelvis, giraffe scapula, cow hooves, bisected cow skull, rhino femur, rhino scapula.
Glad you spotted the bone named after the wildly popular Nü-Tango-Metal post-bluegrass band Mystery Giraffe Pelvis! 🙂
I was into MGP before they were big.
oh and the weird thing right at the front of the second picture looks like a horses distal phalanx. no idea what the offering is.
Hmmm, yeah, the offering. Looks solid, like a vertebra or phalanx of something really big, and the irregular stuff on the side facing the camera looks like pathology, e.g a grumbling osteomyelitis or osteophytosis secondary to arthritis. Or maybe a fused bunch of foot bones?
I think you are onto something with the pathology, it looks rather crumbly for bone. OH thinks it may have fractured and rehealed badly, and agrees with your idea of osteomyelitus.
It definitely looks like a pathologic phalanx, as the irregular structure cannot be anything normal. But the real question is what the smaller, paler object is in the foreground. I am suggesting a sesamoid.
Think you’re onto something there. There was a post ages ago (can’t be bothered looking for it) where an elephant had some horrible foot pathology, prob osteomyelitis. The object looks to be too big to be a single phalanx. Perhaps more than one fused together or a carpal?
https://whatsinjohnsfreezer.com/2012/03/30/the-frailty-of-elephant-feet/ is probably what you’re thinking of
Has anyone a clue already on what is on Darwin’s neck?
Finally someone comments on it! It’s not a tumour.
nope! But a lovely necklace indeed 😉 Although I think I would get some strange reactions if walking down main street..
I think instead of John’s usual exotics it might be a sheep vertebral column, borrowed from the museum at the camden campus.
All I got were the easy ones (croc skull, elephant foot, ostrich pelvis). I feel duly humbled by this crowd.
Man, you folks nailed it! Well done! No points this time, though. But Darwin gets 3.8 billion points!
From the far left, clockwise, in the 1st pic we have the left front foot of an Asian elephant (from Inside Nature’s Giants), the right humerus of the same animal, Mystery Giraffe Pelvis (swooning and fainting fans, relax), a turkey ribcage and pectoral girdle, a necklace of dog vertebrae, a right scapula and left femur of a White rhino, the right scapula from another Asian elephant, the left half of a giraffe skull, a giraffe hind hoof, an ostrich pelvis, an Asian elephant patella, an severely osteomyelitic and fused talus and calcaneum from an Asian elephant (being offered to Darwin in the 2nd pic), a giraffe cervical vertebra, and a Nile crocodile skull (from Inside Nature’s giants, again).
Well played, Darwin Day anatomists!
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Esse osso mais à freante é uma patela de elefante?
My Portuguese is bad, but there is an Asian elephant patella there, yes.