Hey, Christofer Clemente sent me these photos of a ~10cm long skull found by a student on a beach in Perth, Australia ( sent to Chris by Christine Cooper from ECU in Perth). What is it?
I figured I’d feed it to our mystery anatomy gurus for some fun, and see what comes up. You must justify your answer to get points. Convincing us with links to other photos/images will help. I have my ideas what it is, but they kind of suck, because I suck at skull anatomy.
Bonus points for incorporating Australian slang into your answer or beachy imagery/jokes.
No rhyming, unless the rhyming is using silly Australian-ish lingo like adding “-idoo” to the end of a word, or making up Dr-Seussian Oz-ish words.
Remember the scoreboard is here.
Difficulty: skull…
Stomach-Churning Rating: 1/10 super tame and evocative of lovely antipodean beaches, sigh…. (looks out window at grey English vista)
Go!
What's In John's Freezer? 
uhhhhhh… whale vert?
Hehe I would be pretty shocked if that were true! But keep guessing that and sooner or later you’ll be right.
Lots of erosion – no explicit scale but I guess it’s sitting on paper with 7mm feints? So, about 100mm long. Very prominent occipital process, like an ossified nuchal ligament. But – what’s up with the nasal cavity? Are those eroded-out maxillary sinuses opening dorsally. Zygomatic arch apparent but orbit not well defined. Truly weird. My hint for further research would be that massive nuchal/occipital process. But… WTF Australia? Weird.
Indeed!
Deformed sea turtle skull (from outer space…).
That was my first reaction but the palate and ~zygomatic-y arches don’t fit that for me, but it doesn’t seem mammalian either…
Grunter (teleost fish)
Aha! I came ’round to “fish” as a likely answer… but then my knowledge level abruptly terminated. Why grunter and why teleost- do any diagnostic details stand out?
Just found this image of a barred javelin (presumably also called a barred grunter) partial skull…a good match.
G’day John, mate. I’d had a Captain’s at this and I’d bet you a slab of Fosters to a tinnie that it’s a barred javelin, Pomadasys kaakan.
This – http://australianmuseum.net.au/Barred-Javelin-Pomadasys-kaakan – pretty much seals it for me. The first and last photos are the most informative. Diameter of Australia $1 coin is 25mm so the skull is a little larger than yours.
The fish lives in coastal waters and Shark bay is ~800km north of Perth but the skull could easily travel that distance with the help of the Leeuwin Current. Plus, the waters off the coast of Western Australia have been warming so I wouldn’t be surprised if the fish were to be found living closer to Perth anyway.
I should add that what initially appear to possibly be nares, clearly aren’t because the first photo of the underside of the skull shows that there is no opening that might connect them to the lungs. That eliminated Tetrapoda for me straight away. (My first thought was a catfish, possibly an Ariid, but the only spine-like prominence was on the dorsal fin).
Hehe well played, Mark; I figured you’d hop in soon enough!
I’ve seem many weird fish skulls in my comparatively brief time as a fish worker, but Grunter skulls are _weird_ weird!
I didn’t know off the bat. I ultimately happened upon the same image that Andy did. The whole skull seems to be pretty much diagnostic, as it’s very unusual. However, a few key things stand out telling you it’s a) a fish; b) a teleost. The underside had what looks to be fairly large skeletal labyrinths exposed. Relatively large skeletal labyrinths is usually a fish thing. The large, blade-like nuchal crest is very broadly distributed in teleosts. Collateral to this are ridges that extend posteriorly along the skull, also a teleost thing. I don’t know these guys too well, but I suspect the flary-outy bits around the ventrolateral margins of the posterior half of the skull partly consist of the hyomandibula (dorsal part of the hyoid arch. That thing that looks like a zygomatic arch is actually supraorbital. It’s the dorsal rim of the orbit.
Diagnostically, it’s hard to say other than this is a very unusual skull with its broad, spade shape-shaped nasal area. At first I thought maybe a triggerfish, but it’s too broad for that. I then happened upon the same image Andy did.
Aha, very informative, thanks Martin! I am thoroughly convinced. Case closed.
Time me kangeroo down, sport, but dingo me round the kolas if this isn’t the skull of a dropbear.
Bloody oath, e’s away with the pixies, fair dinkum ‘e ‘as.
yeah, google seems to be everybody’s friend! I immediately excluded Tetrapoda (the fenestra do not go to the underside – wtf?), and started searching for “fish skulls”. Found the same page as others above.
It is the top of a fish’s skull. Big fish not familiar with the sort of fish though.
No rhyming, but use of fully by-the-rules Anglo-Saxon 8th Century Alliterative Verse should do the trick.
Strangely surreal, a skull hellish,
Shovel shaped, unsure of purpose,
Deep sea depths, this devil spawned,
Arrived in Australia, already decomposing,
Sea’s spear, striking home,
For growl and grunt, given its name,
Barred and branded, on beach discovered,
Foul fish, foreign to most,
Pomadasys in Perth, probably common,
Kaakan a can, cracked of Foster’s,
Nowhere as near, as gnarly as most,
Disappointingly undisfigured, derived from Australia,
In experience, I expected stranger,
Spotted skin, undersea does it dwell.
Ode to the bone from down under
(Best said in Crocodile Dundee voice)
I’ve a tinnie on the go
And corks around me hat
But this pom’s no idea
What the bloody hell is that.
The bruce above says it’s fish
and I can’t say he’s wrong
It might have been a barbie dish
On the beach, not by the billabong.
i was going to say a fish too, but i just suck more at plants than fishes, so… i saw once a pic of a skull of whatever thing that was and these pics reminded me me of it. and rhyming in portuguese is difficult, in english with aussie slangs? geesh. maybe i could get 0,01? :p
OK, this draws another Mystery Anatomy round to a close. No outstanding +5 point answer this time, but clearly Martin Brazeau was first to solve the puzzle and so he gets +4 points (especially for his detailed clarification).
Then Andy Farke swept in with the image and specific ID and gets +3 points, as does Mark Robinson who came in a little late but with some fun dingo-lingo and extra anatomy.
Then cromercroxHenry, Stu Pond, Robin Birrrdegg laid down some wicked riffs on the Oz/poetic theme so they get +2 points.
For everyone else, no one is a loser here but there are less-winners, and you get +1 point for participating. Yay!
Scoreboard update at:
https://whatsinjohnsfreezer.com/2013/05/02/scoreboard/
No massive shifts, but we’ve got a nice spread of scores and some people creeping upwards like stealthy drop-bears.