What's In John's Freezer?

Anatomy of an amoeba: why not? I like it.

Well I made it this far, and I might not have expected to last four years of blogging but I did last, and I’m very glad. Here is my customary retrospective with some “new” images. I’m glad to see that you’re still here, too: over 3200 blog subscribers (roughly doubled since 2014?) and some regular commenters remain– thank you! Like an undead horror, this blog keeps lurching forward, and it appreciates loyalty.

 Stomach-Churning Rating: 5/10- there’s a bit of blood and stuff. Nothing that unusual. If you’re like Rick (above; by /u/epicolllie), that won’t phase you by now.

The past year on the #JohnsFreezer blog felt quiet to me, and that’s largely because I was distracted by numerous things; if you know me (or follow my whining on Twitter), you probably can guess. But there were enough highlights to keep me feeling satisfied. Judging from your reactions, you liked my inside scoop on the T. rex Autopsy documentary that I consulted on, and a distant second place post was, hmm, that’s kinda surprising: my elephant foot dissection post. I’m rather pleased so many of you clicked on that one, actually. That’s a meat-and-potatoes post for this blog, much like my latest one on getting to know M. caudofemoralis (longus). But hey, check out the “Goat to be Seen” post if those are your kind of entries– it seems a lot of people missed that one, and it had a mix of quirkiness, unflinching raw anatomy, and art that still makes me smile.

I was browsing my photos and ran across this NHMUK exhibit of a small ungulate hooved limb vs. a nice honking big padded elephant foot (both abstracted down to their fundamentals). It elegantly gets across the biomechanical differences between these limb structures. Bravo!

My rants about how sometimes it’s helpful for scientists to put the brakes on media coverage of their own research, and on “HONCOs” (honorary co-authors), also brought in the punters, as did the re-post about the not-so-bad aspects of self-promotion in science. Not so many people appeared to read the post about where ideas come from in science but it got a lot of tweets, which is a strange incongruity, yet my thoughts on how to manage a research team didn’t do any better (but if you read in between the lines, there’s a poignancy to that post). Anyway: good ole rants; ahh, it still feels good to have those off my chest, even after all these months. And writing them helps me sort out my own thoughts, if nothing else.

Hindlimb of a sea turtle that we dissected in 2015 after it came in for a clinical postmortem.

One of my greatest science heroes, “Neill” Alexander, got his due here, and there continue to be comments trickling in on that post from people who are reminiscing about his influence on their careers. That is definitely one of the posts on this blog that I feel best about, even after four years. It meant a lot to me, much as Neill has meant a lot to others. I also did an homage to museums, which in parallel (oddly, but enjoyably for me) became an(other) homage to avian kneecaps. I like them too, and museums of course, but they’re awesome in a very different way from Neill.

Team Cat is still cranking on our biomechanical and anatomical studies of felids- expect a lot of new stuff from us in 2016! Meanwhile, enjoy this spectacular taxidermy– and check out Dr. Andrew Cuff’s blog with the latest science and stories.

I learned a lot about my genome in this fourth year of blogging, and I delved into that with you, as part of my commitment to share what I learn about myself by poking around in my biology. Oh, and I just learned that the image depicting my genomic ancestry was this blog’s most-clicked image this year– that’s cool, and unexpected!

The past year was a big year for dinosaurs on this blog, with a post on the “Giant Dinosaurs of London” and another related to my cameo in the giant titanosaur documentary with Attenborough, but with a focus on dissecting dinosaurs, and a blatant bandwagon tribute to/musing on Jurassic World.

The very, very strange iguanodontian dinosaur Lurdusaurus (forelimb; note the big spiky thumb claw), which I was pleased to see at the natural history museum in Brussels, Belgium in 2015.

And finally, this blog had a baby, or a sister, or whatever, this year, and that has been a blast: Anatomy to You was born, thanks to Dr. Lauren Sumner-Rooney’s expert care and dedication to science communication. If you haven’t checked it out, now’s a good time, or offer to do a guest post for our “In Focus” section if you’ve got some anatomical science to share! Speaking of guest posts, Julia Molnar did a fabulous one about our paper on crocodile backbones this year, here on this blog.

I’m still cleaning up specimens from the freezers: here, some “emu butts” (tails) from a collaboration with Michael Pittman and Heinrich Mallison, and PhD student Luis Lama’s past work. Something about these vertebrae fascinates me.

I didn’t deliver on some plans for this year, such as a komodo dragon anatomy post, but I did finally do the “better know a muscle” and “dissecting dinosaurs” posts I planned, and a few other things, so the year worked out well enough.

What’s coming in year 5 of this blog? I have no bloody idea; I have not gotten that far. I think we’ll all be surprised. Let’s make the most of it! (I will consider requests)

“We’ll always have elaborate models of gorilla muscular anatomy in Paris.”