One of the first parts of the Orca that we’ve been working on is the backbone. In a previous post, I showed our volunteers putting all of the vertebrae in order and gluing the vertebral epiphyses on. Now, we’ve moved on to actually drilling holes in each vertebra so that they can fit over a ...
We’ve been getting some great questions from our visitors about Orca O319 and Orcas in general. Here is a sampling of the questions we’ve gotten, along with our answers: What does “Orca” mean? The scientific name of Orcas is Orcinus orca: “Orcinus” means “kingdom of the dead” or “belonging to Orcus” (a Roman god of ...
Now that I’ve told O319’s story, it’s time to get to the fun part – the articulation! We started on Wednesday, May 8th by sorting through the vertebrae and grouping them by type from head to tail: cervical, thoracic, lumbar, and caudal. Once sorted, they were then ordered based on size measurements taken of each ...
Continuing on from my last post, Moe made the decision to collect the entire skeleton of offshore Orca 0319, since it was such a rare specimen. This, however, was no easy feat! The beach in the Point Reyes National Seashore where the Orca washed up was a 45 minute hike from our truck, including a ...
In the previous blog post, I wrote about our initial observation and field necropsy of Orca 0319 back in November of 2011. Now, I’ll go over the different types of Orcas, called “ecotypes.” There are currently 10 forms (“ecotypes”) of Orca recognized. They are all considered to be the same species (Orcinus orca) until proved ...
We have a very exciting project starting this week (May 10th) in the Piazza: an articulation of an orca skeleton. Articulation, or connecting the bones together, is how we display skeletons so that we can see what an animal looks like without all of its other parts (muscle, skin, etc.). It is a process that’s ...
“What’s our time?” Logan asks moving along the rock paths that crisscross the roof of the CAS. “Two minutes.” Ore, a graduate student, checks his stopwatch. It’s raining and cold and my second bird survey experience has been unexpectedly lucrative. Half an hour earlier, winding our way through the halls of the research department, I ...
Well, it’s a sunny Sunday in Golden Gate Park. The weather was warm and pleasant, and the winter birds were active. My wife Tiffany and I took a stroll up the hill and into the park near Lloyd Lake, where there are often plenty of ducks, gulls, coots, and even a grebe or two. I ...
We recently spent a very successful 2-month field trip in the island province of Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea surveying birds and collecting samples to screen for various avian diseases. We had an amazing crew – collaborator David Mindell, Post-doctoral researcher Jerome Fuchs, Berkeley PhD student Zachary Hanna, San Francisco State University Masters Student Molly ...
A couple weeks ago, I got a call because there was a gopher outside staggering around, obviously disoriented, even falling over onto its side. When I found it, it was lethargic and easy to approach and I picked it up and carried it inside without any struggle or fight. It was loaded with fleas. The ...
