Today I spent four hours applying Vinac (polyvinyl acetate, plus some acetone) to the bones of a recently-deceased black bear (Ursus americanus): skull, mandible, sacrum/pelvic bones, an ulna, a femur, a radius and a couple of humeri. Plus there was a camel (Camelus dromedarius) skeleton (disarticulated and starting to carbonize, so some of the bones were this creepy black, it was neat)...and at the end of the day a bird flew into the museum! Poor guy, I'm not sure if he got out okay, but I'm sure he'll find his way out. We'll keep an eye out (and a door open) for him. Also learned how to screen wash today, it was fun. Found a few small chunks of mammoth bone. Very nearly had another run-in with what I like to lump generalize as 'cactus'--anything prickly and painful to step on, like sticky burrs, prickly pears, cacti and all other evil things that annoy the feet and hands. But luckily it was a false alarm. Previously I've had a sticky burr roll allll over my right hand (half an hour of picking tiny, painful, nearly invisible needles out of my palm and fingers...hoo fun) and an unfortunate encounter with a prickly pear in Sicily...not worth eating for the annoying prickly pain!...

Also more vacuuming of the bonebed, which meant yes--more dirt everywhere! Wheee! It started to rain when I washed out the vacuum at the end of the day. I also think the acetone gave me a sort of temporary headache. Even with the Darth Vader mask I had to wear!

Asked around about the deer in town, turns out there are both white-tailed (Odocoileus virginianus) and mule deer (O. hemionus) in town, and even some evidence of cross-breeding to form hybrids of the two species. I think the deer in the last picture is a white-tail, but I could be mistaken...he did have a white tail, though...

As for the bones next to my door, could be bison, say the powers that be. It's still a mystery. EDIT: I'm thinking maybe deer...I thought the below was an astragalus, but with my limited knowledge of deer skeletal anatomy, I'm probably just wrong. Oh so wrong. I think it might be the distal end of a femur after scouring through Mammalian Osteology...although it's been hard to find a good picture of a deer patella...so I'm still not 100% sure.

EDIT #2: Oh hell yeah.

http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Labs/Anatomy_&_Physiology/A&P201/Articulations/thmb_distal_end_femur_PB191208.JPG

I think it's safe to say we have distal femur...

















Any ideas? Deer, bison, other? Distal end of femur?

In other news, buffalo! (Bison bison)