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.

Tags

More like this

The latest Carnivalia has been published for you to dig your teeth into.
tags: I and the Bird, blog carnival, b
What's on your mind these days? I'd like to read what you are thinking about these days, so feel free to share! Added 11pm ET: Some of my random thoughts:

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

Martin--Thanks. Links should all work now.

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…