Skeletal science

They found a whole lot of the rest of Spicomellus, aka one of the oldest ankylosaurians

Turns out it's also the spikiest

And apparently sacral shields and tail weapons go all the way back too

It’s Fossil Friday, so let’s get a leg up on the weekend with these colossal limbs! Snapped circa 1899, this archival photo from the Museum’s digital collections depicts a Museum preparator standing beside the fossilized limbs of dinosaurs discovered in Wyoming. The larger bones belong to sauropods while the smaller bones belong to a theropod—likely Allosaurus.   Want to learn more about dinosaurs? Plan your next visit to the Museum!

Happy Fossil Friday! This archival image, snapped sometime before 1960, depicts duck-billed dinosaurs on display, side by side, at the Museum. Also known as hadrosaurids, these massive herbivores were the dominant plant-eaters in many areas of the world during the Late Cretaceous about 85 million years ago. In addition to their duck-like beaks and webbed front feet, hadrosaurs had powerful jaws with hundreds of blunt teeth that were ideal for grinding fibrous land plants.

Bones of the Arm and Hand

like look at this shit

this is an example of what are known as homologous structures. because of the similarities in bone structure, it suggests that all creatures shown here have a common ancient ancestor

essentially these all have the same bones, but shifted, stretched, fused, and warped by evolution and time to serve the purpose the animal needed

and they all do have a common ancestor, as does all life on earth

look at this crazy ass tree showing EVERYTHING started as a teeny tiny ancient bacteria and evolved and grew over millions of years to fucking EVERYTHING, all life being connected to this singular point

they got bones in there

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? THEY LITERALLY CALL THE THIRD LONG BONE OF THE HIND LEG THE METATARSAL?! EXCUSE ME BUT THAT IS NOT A FOOT-

My uni used to host this bio-art photography thing to show the pretty side of science and I had this pic waiting for over a year now, but they didn’t make an another edition, so I might as well post it here!