Death and life in the woodshed
June 11, 2018
Years ago, the roof of our summer-house suffered some water damage and had to be replaced. So I converted it into a woodshed which I attached to the side of our house. As well the store for our firewood logs, it’s also where I keep many of my decomposing corpses — most of them in boxes and bags, a few of them not. Recently, a self-seeded clematis Eccremocarpus scaber has worked its way through a crack and started growing over the specimens and the logs:
Most of the specimens are hidden from view, apart from a tortoise that you can make out in a translucent box over on the right. The centrepiece here is some kind of medium-sized mammal, consisting of the skull and much of the vertebral column and ribs, which my youngest son brought back from a camping trip for me. Elsewhere in various boxes and bags are multiple kestrels, a falcon, several other birds, a couple of bearded dragons, a snake, a mole, a rat, and miscellaneous small mammals. Some day, I will prep out all their skeletons. I really will.
Vertebrates and invertebrates of Nova Scotia
June 16, 2015
Last week I went to Halifax, Nova Scotia, for the twice-yearly meet-up with my Index Data colleagues. On the last day, four of us took a day-trip out to Peggy’s Cove to eat lunch at Ryer Lobsters.
We stopped off at the Peggy’s Cove lighthouse on the way, and spotted a vertebrate, which I am pleased to present:
It’s a whale skull, but I have no idea what kind. Can anyone help out?
So much for vertebrates — it was really all about the inverts. Here are six of them:
I have a 2lb lobster here; my colleague Jakub went for two 1lb lobsters, as did Jason and Wolfram (not pictured). That’s Wolfram’s lobster closest to the camera, giving a better impression of just what awesome beasts these were.
Peggy’s Cove: recommended. For vertebrates and inverts.
(Thanks to Wolfram Schneider for these photos.)
These animals experienced days less than 23 hours long, and years with close to 400 days.
Mounted skeleton of Emeus crassus
June 16, 2014
In a back room at the Field Museum, from my visit in 2012.
I took a lot of photos of the neck, which nicely records the transition in neural spine shape from simple to bifurcated–a topic of interest to sauropodophiles.
The holotype dorsal vertebra of Dystylosaurus
May 19, 2014
Now considered a junior synonym of Supersaurus, on very solid grounds.
Incidentally, unlike the neural spines of most non-titanosaurian sauropods, the neural spine of this vertebra is not simply a set of intersecting plates of bone. It is hollow and has a central chamber, presumably pneumatic. Evidence:
