Dear Hannah,
My first thought on seeing the humerus was that it looked very
marsupial. I'm only familiar with some Australian marsupials, and it
looks very similar to my pictures of a Common Brushtail Possum humerus
and femur. However, it's not quite right, and yours is a bit bigger
than I think a Brushtail would be, so I'd say the suggestions of an
American opossum sound good.
Kind regards,
Sarah Croker
Dr Sarah Croker
Discipline of Anatomy and Histology
Building F13
University of Sydney
NSW 2006 Australia
Ph: +61 2 9351 6545
Em: [log in to unmask]
Quoting Hannah Russ <[log in to unmask]>:
> Happy New Year Zooarchers!
>
> I thought I'd start the year with a mystery ID!
>
> Last year we ran a project in Sheffield that re-housed around 1000
> museum skeletal specimens that were either going to be disposed of,
> or had been in long term storage. For the most part the specimens
> were in excellent condition and very well labelled, making excellent
> additions to our already extensive zooarchaeology reference
> collection. However, we got one almost complete, unlabelled,
> skeleton (minus skull) of a cat sized animal from Creswell's surplus
> modern comparative collection. Despite it being almost complete we
> are still scratching our heads over what species it is!
>
> It doesn't match anything in our reference collection here in
> Sheffield. We know it has a long tail and claws, clavicles are
> present, as are epipubic bones.
>
> I have photographed the humerus, scapula, femur, pelvis and tail
> which can be seen at the link below:
> http://alexandriaarchive.org/bonecommons/items/show/1884
>
> Any ideas would be most appreciated. It looks so sad sat in the lab
> waiting to be labelled, we'd really love to incorporate it into the
> collection.
> Have a fantastic 2013 everyone!
>
> All the best, Hannah
>
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