#bone collecting
The armadillo is chugging along after 2 months of cold maceration! It’s truly winter here in the mountains but I have the maceration bucket under an upside-down aquarium to act as a little greenhouse and it has proven very helpful! Any sun that decides to peak out warms up the glass and keeps the water temperature moderately warm. It also keeps the smell in quite well! Super excited to get this one all cleaned up.
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The next skuzzle on my to-do list is this bullfrog! I had the mummified bullfrog sitting in peroxide and ideally I would have taken out a mostly intact skull around 2-3 days but I only got a chance to check it about 5-6 days in and all the skin/ligaments had dissolved so I got to pick out the pieces instead. Unfortunately the body sustained a lot more damage than I thought so no skeleton articulation. Some pieces will be taking a degreasing ammonia soak and then I get to start gluing!
It doesn’t look like it but progress is being made on the fish skull! After the first acetone bath it went into the warm Dawn/ammonia bath for a month and then back into acetone for another 2 weeks to get more grease moving. This picture is right after pulling it out of the acetone where a lot of the grease is now dispersed throughout the bone and ready to come out. It’s back in warm Dawn/ammonia now and I’m hoping to see some good progress!
Coachwhip vs Rattlesnake
The beauty of non-venomous and venomous side-by-side! I did a little adjusting on the rattlesnake’s jaws while I had it out and I’m in love all over again. Kind of wishing I kept the coachwhip’s body but at 6 foot long I just don’t have the means to assemble and display it right now.
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Coachwhip / Red Racer Snake Skull
So glad to have this one finally finished! It turned out beautiful and it was so worth gluing every single tiny tooth in by hand.
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Degreasing the bobcat has been the bane of my existence but this before and after speaks for itself! Finally pulled the toe bones out of degreasing after 10ish months and they’ve come a long way from when I first got them. Now I’m just waiting on the leg bones and carpals/tarsals to finish up before finally being able to start articulating.
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I’ve had this fish skull sitting in acetone for over 2.5 months and was hoping to see a little more progress on this grease! For the most part acetone is not going to “degrease” bones but it helps loosen up the grease to come out easier with other degreasing methods. However I read a lot of fish people had good luck melting the oils out of fish bones with just acetone so I was a little disappointed to open up the bucket and find crystal clear acetone. It definitely brought up a lot of the oils to the surface though so the classic Dawn bath should do wonders!
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The sun came out so its time for some turtle cleaning! This female Eastern Box Turtle was beautifully cleaned by nature so she got a soapy scrub and a dip in peroxide for cleaning and sanitizing and is now sitting with a peroxide/baking soda paste for some whitening. In the first picture you can see the plastron scutes starting to come apart after drying from the soapy bath so I’m hoping they stay put now, otherwise I’ll have a fun project on my hands. Looking forward to getting this one all cleaned up!
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Bone Hunting: East Coast Edition!
My boyfriend and I just completed a road trip to the east coast to visit family who owns acres of dense forestry and we couldn’t wait to do some bone hunting. We first found a beautiful doe skeleton who looked very peaceful in the forest, so we let her be. My boyfriend then hiked up a steep hill and called me up to look at something strange and to both of our surprise it was a box turtle! It’s in beautiful condition with most of the skeleton in or around it, save for the skull (of course!). To top it off on the way back to the car I found a lovely monarch butterfly lying in the grass. That was the end of our east coast hunting but not the end of the treasures!
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I’m kicking myself for jumping the gun before taking a disassembled picture (the skull thus far has 11 separate pieces), but now I’m stuck halfway through this coachwhip skull! I had a little too much confidence in thinking I knew the assembly because I had done my rattlesnake skull before, but shockingly, venomous and non-venomous skulls are quite different! I at least thought to keep the parts I pulled out on the correct sides (save for the few pairs on the top that had fallen off before I touched it) but their relations are a little bit mysterious to me.
Also unlike the rattlesnake, all the itty bitty teeth were not fused to the jaw, but I managed to save almost, if not all, to further torture myself. It will all be worth it if I can get the darned thing together! Rattlesnake is in the background watching over and being generally unhelpful~
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Juvenile Opossum Skeleton
My baby is complete! Took a long time to get the motivation to power through articulating and even longer to get pictures I was happy with, but I am so proud of this fella. I still need to add the rib cage cartilage and sternum bones once I figure out what material to use. Shown with an average adult opossum skull; when I get a complete adult skeleton they will be a hissing duo!
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It’s moving time! Luckily we’re moving just down the road so my big friends here could be thrown in a big box as a beautiful skull pile. This pile also debuts my lovely new pronghorn skull, found last summer in New Mexico. Now we’ll see how long it takes for me to unpack everything and get my cabinets back up!
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This lovely chicken skeleton will be joining my bobcat for a grand articulation piece. The weather has just been miserable around here so I’ve had no motivation to progress on any bone projects. I won’t be able to articulate much of this skeleton without the bobcat already done but I’m hoping to start doing something with this one at least.
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I’m finally getting the bobcat laid out and have run into some questionable parts. The first photo shows the collection of parts in question: tail vertebrae with a possible extra piece since it doesn’t fit into the flow of the rest, possible carpals/tarsals and extra toe bones, all matched up toe bones with a mismatch pair, and the claws matched up as closely as possible.
The second photo shows a closeup of the possible carpals and tarsals. All references I’ve been able to find show that there are 7 carpals and 6 tarsals for bobcats and I’ve successfully identified those ones. I believe pair #3 could be carpals located near the dew claw but I only found one image that can support that theory.
The third photo shows the sternum bones with an oddly-shaped piece I haven’t seen in any other images of feline or canine sternum bones. I’ve also looked at feline x-rays but still didn’t see a similar-shaped piece.
The extra pieces are throwing me off but I’m not surprised since I also found a small brown claw sheath when I received the skeleton. I’m sure multiple skeletons were cleaned in the same beetle tank and the seller accidentally picked up some remnants of other creatures when bagging this guy up.
If anyone recognizes these bits please feel free to send me a message!
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Bullfrog Skull
Despite turning out asymmetrical with a few broken odds and ends I’m very happy with this skull build! Super excited to add this big fella to my collection.
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Bobcat claws are all clean and back together! All but three arrived with the sheaths and bone attached so I taped down the sheaths as they were placed in the first photo while the bones were being cleaned. This helped me keep track of which bone went to which sheath once everything was cleaned.
These are the last processing photos for this skeleton. It’s a great feeling to have gone through this lengthy cleaning process and finally finish with a beautiful skeleton. The next step will be sorting the skeleton’s right and left, front and back parts for articulation!
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