Bird skulls (an aside)

I'm not sure if anyone's chosen this as their collection this year... I think not (it does rather require you to find a lot of dead birds). But there was an interesting article about the subject in this evening's Radio 4 'Inside Science', which you might like to listen to. You'll remember how Charles Darwin's encounter with the finches of the Galapagos islands and the variety of their beak shapes was a spark for his theory of evolution.

CC image of Phoenicopterus ruber (American flamingo) skull by Didier Descouens.

We've got a few bird skulls in the collection of creatures in OJ17. But not many compared to the Natural History Museum: they have 16,600 specimens. Researchers at the University of Sheffield have been making 3-D scans of these and other skulls. As they explain, "bird bills are adapted to particular diets and foraging techniques, and so can tell us a lot about the ‘ecological niche’ of species – the role an animal plays in its environment. If bill shape evolves quickly it could be that many ecological niches have been rapidly occupied, or perhaps that the diversity of available niches has dramatically increased. Either way, this provides the opportunity for the rapid birth of new species." You can assist them in their quest in a 'citizen science' project called 'Mark My Bird.' Or, supposing you have plenty of other things to do presently, you can have a quick look at their website and spend a moment twirling virtual skulls.

The photos of bird skulls at the Skull Site are easier to navigate though as they have the English as well as Latin names.