I’ve been meaning to highlight Zygoma, a great blog by my friend Mr P. V. of Lewisham. Among other things, he offers, every Friday, a mystery object the identity of which his readers can solve over the weekend. The object is usually a bone of some sort, and quite a few experts gather to pick over them. One of them – one of the best – is only nine.
Well, now I have my own contribution to the canon. While Canis croxorum took me for a walk along Cromer East Beach earlier today, I found this. I have posted two views. The scale is in pounds, shillings and ounces.
Any ideas?
I think it’s from a baby seal. A baby, because the ends are rather rough and unformed. At first I thought it was a humerus,but now I think it’s a right femur. If so, then both pictures are the wrong way up. In the bottom picture, the articulation with the pelvis is at the bottom right, and the knee joint is at the top.
No idea, but I got a strong waft of nostalgia from that ruler. One almost identical, even down to the colour of the wood and the font of the numbers, can be found in the house I grew up in.*
*at least I presume it’s still there somewhere; it would be highly unlike my parents to throw something so useful out
P.S. just for fun, the second half of the reCAPTCHA for this comment clearly says “TGFB”, where the “B” is quite obviously a capital Greek “beta”. Biology, it’s everywhere. (Transforming Growth Factor Beta, for the nonbelievers).
Hmm, no eye dear, but that reminds me I found a bone in my garden at the weekend. Will post pic.
I can’t believe I only just found this post – shocking.
Nice mystery object you have there, looks to me like a humerus from a sub-adult Common Seal Phoca vitulina. I say sub-adult rather than baby, because seal bones tend to be quite slow to fuse and the size of this is consistent with a near-adult.
Nice find – kudos to Canis croxorum!
Thank you Paolo! Though it was me who found this, not Canis croxorum. She tends to specialize in things that are a bit smelly, like the various Mystery Fish I post here occasionally.
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