Weird Anatomy

Here's a group I wish was better known: these are “𝘌𝘶𝘳𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘱𝘩𝘪𝘴” 𝘴𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘶𝘴 (skull) and 𝘡𝘪𝘱𝘩𝘪𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘱𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘪 (rostrum), members of the longirostrine “swordfish” dolphins (Eurhinodelphinidae) from the Miocene of Lecce, Italy, displayed at the Museum of Paleontology of Naples (the label says "Rhabdosteidae", but this name is now considered problematic, see Fordyce and de Muizon, 2001). Many different odontocete lineages converged on a longirostrine, swordfish-like morphology, especially during the Miocene, but eurhinodelphinids were particularly swordfish-like, having a mandible that was much shorter than the rostrum. Approximately one-third of this long rostrum was formed by the premaxilla, which in at least some genera (including 𝘡𝘪𝘱𝘩𝘪𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘱𝘩𝘪𝘴) had an elongated edentulous termination (McCurry and Pyenson 2019; Tosetto et al. 2023). Two competing ideas have been formulated to explain the function of this hyperelongate...

A trophy specimen of European mouflon displayed at the Zoological Museum of Naples. This particular specimen was Spanish. European mouflon are a very interesting group of wild sheep of controversial origin, taxonomic position and conservation management. Their "original" range is to be found on the Mediterranean islands of Cyprus, Corsica and Sardinia, where they were brought by humans from Asia around 8500 years BCE, following a pre-domestication phase (but see below) (Castelló et al. 2016; Barbato et al. 2022; Garel et al. 2022; Kárpáti & Náhlik 2023). Because of this, many authors have regarded the Cyprus and Tyrrhenian mouflons as subspecies of the domestic sheep, as Ovis aries ophion and O. a. musimon , respectively (e.g. Castelló et al. 2016). The same specimen as above, from a different angle. However, there is a possibility that the Cyprus mouflon dispersed naturally on the island given lower sea levels at the time, while the domestication that happened in Corsic...

I'm fascinated by weird and flamboyant nasal structures, so here's a dik-dik, a recent addition to the Zoological Museum of Naples The dik-dik displayed at the Zoological Museum of Naples. Specifically, this is a Damara dik-dik, often treated as a subspecies of the Kirk's dik-dik (as Madoqua kirkii damarensis ), and thus labeled as such here, but elevated to full species level by some authors (as Madoqua damarensis ) (see for example Castelló er al. 2016). Dik-diks are quite small antelopes with a series of adaptations to desert environments, the most characteristic of which is their elongated snout: the enlarged nasal cavity, which features a moist, black mucosa, allows increased air flow through the nostrils, cooling the blood directed to the brain via evaporative cooling, while also minimizing water loss. Brain overheating is thus avoided, as the brain is made cooler than the core body temperature (Castelló et al. 2016; Blank & Li 2022). Gunther's dik-diks ( Mado...

The large double-crested theropod dinosaur displayed at the Museo delle Scienze (MUSE).   Surely this is Dilophosaurus right!? Surprise, it's not. Nope, the mounted skeleton you see in the photo, a cast displayed at the Museo delle Scienze (MUSE), is not actually Dilophosaurus wetherilli . What you're actually seeing here is instead another early theropod dinosaur, the Chinese  Sinosaurus triassicus.  Despite the name, Sinosaurus is from the Early Jurassic, and it's an early example of large theropod dinosaur: it's been recently estimated at around 5-6 m long and more than 800 kg in weight (Liang et al. 2024). Other than S. triassicus , a second species, S. sinensis , is usually ascribed to the genus (see Zhang et al. 2023 and references therein).  Another view of the same mounted skeleton, from a slightly different angle. Note the somewhat surprisingly thin skull. As you can see from the photos, Sinosaurus had a relatively delicate skull construction with a pair ...

The skeleton of a dromedary at the Zoological Museum of Naples...what's up with all those fangs!? Camelids are extremely interesting and puzzling creatures, with a long list of peculiarities both in their soft and hard anatomy, including those allowing life in deserts. Today I want to talk a bit about skeletal oddities mainly, exemplified here by the skeleton of a dromedary ( Camelus dromedarius , see above photo) and the skull of a wild camel ( Camelus ferus , see below), both displayed at the Zoological Museum of Naples. UPDATE: note that according to Pietro Martini, who is cited below, the museum's labels may be wrong here: the skeleton should be that of a Bactrian camel, the skull that of a dromedary. The aforementioned wild camel skull (note that I'm following Jemmett et al. (2022) here in restricting the common name "Bactrian camel" to the domestic form Camelus bactrianus alone). You may notice the presence of multiple fangs in both the upper and lower dent...

Skeleton of a brown bear ( Ursus arctos ) standing up, at the Zoological Museum of Naples.   Bears (Ursidae) are an ecologically diverse and widely distributed group of carnivorans: originating in the Late Oligocene-Early Miocene, they would go on to colonize almost every continent, so that bears can be found in Eurasia, North and South America, and until recently, Africa (Galdies 2022; Luna-Aranguré & Vázquez-Domínguez 2024). Bears have a long history in Europe, here we have on the left an Auvergne bear ( Ursus minimus ) from the Pliocene, and on the right an Etruscan bear ( Ursus etruscus ) from the Early Pleistocene, both from Italy and both displayed in the Museo Paleontologico di Montevarchi. They've both been posited as possible ancestors of cave and brown bears, with U. etruscus  probably being the best candidate (see Galdies 2022), and U. minimus has also been regarded as the possible common ancestor of all extant members of Ursus (see Charters et al. 2024)....