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No time for anything new (working on a book chapter and putting the finishing touches to the Tet Zoo book), so here's this, from the archives. NOT properly updated, so please be aware that it's more than four years old...
There are three extant manatee species*: Trichechus inunguis of the Amazon…
In response to the news that the US Fish and Wildlife Service is even thinking about downlisting the Florida manatee from "endangered" to "threatened," I make this modest proposal: boycott Florida.
Trichechus manatus is considered vulnerable on habitat-wide level by the IUCN - World Conservation…
A stuffed Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana), photographed at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.
A stuffed fox squirrel (Sciurus niger), photographed at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.
Those are some sturdy ribs. Is that due to strong muscles attached or for armor?
The ribs are pachyosteosclerotic - i.e. pachyostotic (ribs inflated outwards with dense bone) and osteosclerotic (medullary cavity smaller, rimmed by dense bone). This is an adaptation for negative bouyancy - otherwise, they'd have a hard time staying submerged. Sirenian bones are extremely dense, to the point where sometimes fragments of their bones in the field can be mistaken for fragments of teeth.
There's a dugong skull in the local natural history museum, so I'm unfazed by the bizarre appearance of the manatee skull. It's the body that freaks me out- pachyostotic ribs, and check out the fingers! If all sirenians were extinct, I wonder if there are any clues that would prevent us from restoring them with webbed hands instead of flippers.