Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

When Fiona checked her email this morning, she found this note from our next-door neighbour Jenny:

Hi
I seem to remember Mike wanting a mole – I do hope so because I’ve left you a body on your patio in a cereal box!

Cheers Jen x

What a delightful surprise! And here it is:

The SV-POW! mole, intact

And a close-up of that awesome digging hand:

The SV-POW! mole, right manus

I don’t have time to deal with it properly right now, so it’s gone into a plastic box with some small holes in the lid, where I will trust invertebrates to do my work for me — as they did to great effect with the juvenile baby rabbit whose skeleton I must show you some time.

The end-game here is of course to obtain a complete skeleton; but if not that, then at least the upper-arm bones. I’m on record as saying that next to sauropod vertebrae, mole humeri are the bones that move me most; and elsewhere I nominated mole humeri in response to John Hutchinson’s question, “what are the strangest animal bones (in form & function etc) that have ever been discovered?”

Here’s why:

Left: rat humerus (for comparison), Right: mole humerus. The rat humerus is unfused on top, which is why there is a visible gap between the two parts.

I stole this picture from an Ossamenta post, The strangest animal bone?. Get yourself over there for more wacky rat-vs.-mole comparisons!