Tag: osteology
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Spooky, Scary, Inaccurate Skeletons
Happy Halloween from Major Buzzkill! To celebrate, I’m going to ruin everyone’s fun and take a look at a recent trend in Halloween decorations: the inaccurate animal skeletons. Let me preface this by saying I think these decorations are super cute and if I ever get past my ever-growing student debt and get a house,
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Bones That Look Like Other Bones: Rodent Week Edition
According to Twitter, last week was #RodentWeek. So here’s another comparative anatomy minipost about some commonly found rodents: squirrels, rats, and mice! Now, when it comes to differentiating between these three, size matters. As you can see from the above photo, there’s a huge difference between the skull of a squirrel and the skull of
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Bones That Looks Like Other Bones: A MiniPost About Birds and Rabbits
I’ve been quite busy doing analysis on assemblages for my PhD project, so I don’t have much time for blogging these days. But in (belated) honour of International Rabbit Day, here’s a quick comparison of rabbits and birds! For the most part, rabbits and birds are quite distinguishable animals. I mean, one has wings and
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On Animal Teeth, or Why I’m Not a Dentist
Since my last post using comparative anatomy was rather popular, I figured I should write a similar post for this week, starting with the most important part of the skeleton for zooarchaeologists (in my opinion) – teeth! In my experience, teeth are the best skeletal elements to recover. Why? They’re one of the more easily
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On Seals, the Dogs of the Sea
The other day, a group of archaeologists (myself included) stood around trays of assorted animal bones from a recent surface collection. It was just a cursory glance at the assemblage, but of course the mind immediately starts identifying bones that jump out at you. “That’s a dog mandible…that’s a cow tooth…that’s bird, for sure…and that’s…a
Animal Archaeology 