Geobulletin alpha

Source info:

Author:	Anthony Maltese
Date:	2011-03-04 00:02:00
Blog:	RMDRC paleo lab
URL:	http://rmdrc.blogspot.com/2011/03/skeletonizing-komodo-for-research.html

Summary:

As many of you know, Komodo dragons are pretty good stand-ins for the basic anatomy of mosasaurs. Ignore the sacrum and those pesky land-going limbs, and they basically look identical. Recently, the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo's 18 year old female Komodo dragon, Hektor, unfortunately passsed away. After the necropsy was performed the decision was made to prepare the skeleton for use as an educational biomaterial. This means getting the skin and flesh off of the bones.Anthony, Scott and Jacob removing Hektor's skull and neck for investigationThere are several ways to accomplish this, many covered by Darren Naish on Tetrapod Zoology. The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo uses the Arthropod method for their smaller skeletons, in this case dermested beetles. These little bugs have a hankering for flesh and do an extremely good and quick job.Hektor's head and neck at the beginning of the beetling processAfter just 3 days, the amount of muscle eaten off of the neck is already evidentThis is meerely the beginning of the project and not much to report on so far, but I am impressed in the amount of meat consumed in only 3 days in with the colony. Thanks to Dr. Liza Dadone, Scott Fortney and Clark Wilder for letting Jacob and I work on this project.

Content analysis:

Keywords:

beetles, biomaterial, cheyenne mountain zoo, dadone, flesh, fortney, hankering, ins, komodo dragon, komodo dragons, little bugs, liza, Mosasaur, naish, necropsy, sacrum, several ways, skeleton, skeletons, skull, zoology