Skeleton – Anole Annals

Birds are lovely animals. Our avian friends swoop through the air, defecate on field equipment, and consume lizards. What’s not to like?! Well, their shoulder region, for example. Lost interclavicle, reverted muscle pathways, and so many other anatomical adaptations that appear crucial for the modern avian life style, but that are hard to explain in a gradual-evolutionary context. Reconstructing the structural evolution of the avian shoulder remains a challenging task to students of biomechanics and kinematics. When I left my European homestead to enter the Canadian realm of biological sciences, I was hoping to solve the evolutionary mystery of the avian shoulder, at least in part. Alas, the discovery of anoles sent me on a much more convoluted journey.

Here is the first tale that resulted from that endeavour (Tinius & Russell 2014).

It’s October and that means Halloween is approaching. What says Halloween better than skeletons? They are everywhere this time of year! Therefore, I think that it is the right time to post a few ideas about how to prepare, label, and visualize skeletal material for studies of anole biology. (Make a few yourself and decorate your next Halloween party with them!) If you would like more detailed protocols please email me directly. If you have additional tips and tricks please add them to the comments section below.

Museum collections are filled with dried skeletal material

Dry Skeletons
Dried skeletal preparations are common in most museum collections. Sometimes this marks the fate of a damaged specimen or an animal that perished unexpectedly, but often these have been purposefully built to represent the taxonomic or morphological diversity of a group. Regardless of their origins and use, dried skeletal material makes up a significant portion of our museum collections and great effort should be taken to continue building them with well-prepared material.

Tag: Skeleton

Geometric Morphometric Analysis of the Shoulder of Jamaican Anoles

Glowing Green Lizard Heads: Tips and Tricks of Skeletal Preparation