Bony Beauties

i-fb430e8198037ccf4fd3bd4c00900c1e-angler500.jpgI am a bone geek, I confess. On my bookshelves are a bunch of coffee-table books full of skulls, femurs, and xyphoid processes. They include From Lucy To Language, loaded with hominid remains, Human Bones for our current anatomy, and Fossils for a quick hit of Deep Time. An excellent addition to this sub-sub-genre is called, simply, Evolution. It's loaded with gorgeous pictures of vertebrate skeletons (including this angler). In today's New York Times, I have a photoessay with several other selections. You can check out a slide show here.

Update: I forgot to mention that I talk about the photoessay at the top of this week's NY Times Science podcast.

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And I thought that anglers were scary looking with their flesh on...

I definitely need to get a copy of this book; thanks for sharing this Carl.

The link to the book Fossils you mention is broken. What is the full reference?

Martin

By Martin Weiss (not verified) on 06 Nov 2007 #permalink

If you like bones, have you checked out the Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week (SVPOW!) blog at http://svpow.wordpress.com/ ? Very narrow, very fascinating stuff.

By Mike from Ottawa (not verified) on 17 Nov 2007 #permalink

Yes, skulls and skeletons can be really fascinating. Especially fish have often such complex cranial structures. When I was this year at the Museum of Natural History at Vienna I photographed some very interesting skeletons and skulls of fish, including those of a monkfish. But the other ones were also really amazing, for example the strange skeleton of a sunfish, or the bizarre skull of a halibut. I posted some photos of them some time ago at my blog: http://bestiarium.kryptozoologie.net/artikel/einige-interessante-fischs…