Update, with mystery bone
Sep. 10th, 2010 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ossamentaMy intention with this blog/journal was to post a bit more frequently than seems to be the reality. Sorry about that. Life has been busy, with lots of work, moving house and doing the last layout on my tanning essay. Soon (fingers crossed) I can hand it in!
Despite lots of work, there has been few bones worth writing about. One was quite interesting though. I had found this kind of bone before, but then as now I had no clue what it was. Often I can tell either species or bone type, but this time it just looked like nothing I had ever seen. A juvenile bone, so one would look for similarities in shape to bones from adults rather than a 100% match. Last time I gave up. This time I asked other osteologists on a discussion list (and oh what a useful discussion list it is), and two knew: it was a bird wing bone, an unfused part of the carpometacarpus. I had never seen even an image of an unfused carpometacarpus before. No wonder I had no clue how to identify it.
Carpometacarpus of adult duck, juvenile bird (possibly large chicken) and adult chicken
Despite lots of work, there has been few bones worth writing about. One was quite interesting though. I had found this kind of bone before, but then as now I had no clue what it was. Often I can tell either species or bone type, but this time it just looked like nothing I had ever seen. A juvenile bone, so one would look for similarities in shape to bones from adults rather than a 100% match. Last time I gave up. This time I asked other osteologists on a discussion list (and oh what a useful discussion list it is), and two knew: it was a bird wing bone, an unfused part of the carpometacarpus. I had never seen even an image of an unfused carpometacarpus before. No wonder I had no clue how to identify it.
Carpometacarpus of adult duck, juvenile bird (possibly large chicken) and adult chicken