If you haven't visited the Museum of Osteology in Oklahoma City then put it on your list. Born from the hard work and imagination of ambitious bone-enthusiast Jay Villemarette and his business"Skulls Unlimited," the museum houses more animal skeletons than you can shake a femur at.
But what's a weirdo museum without a seemingly arbitrary list of rankings? So with that, I present the Top 5 Bones (and/or full skeletons) in the Osteology Museum:
5. Magellanic Penguin
You don't really think of penguins having bones...or at least I usually don't. But of course they do. And seeing the remains of one like this makes me think of them a little more like chickens or turkeys after a nice holiday dinner. Birds are birds, I guess
4. Fruit Bat
A lot of people find the giant skeletons like the humpback whale or giraffe to be the most impressive but, for me, the smaller ones are the most interesting. Clearly a lot of work went into cleaning, preparing and arranging the tiny, intricate bones of this little guy. Plus you get the side-by-side comparison with his taxidermy specimen buddy.
3. King Cobra
A couple of things stick out with this creepy guy: apparently a cobra's hood isn't just skin or cartilage, it's actual bones. You can also get a look at how a snake's jawbone allows it to open extra wide to gobble up their dinner.
2. Two-Headed/Two-Faced Calves
There's nothing better to see in a kooky museum than some kind of biological oddity, particularly of the two-headed variety. The accompanying plaque indicates that this also happens to snakes and humans but the overwhelming majority that I've seen have been cows.
1. Skull of a Space Chimp!
What we have here is the skull of an honest to goodness chimpanzee from NASA's Space Chimp Program. Son unlike the other animals at the museum, being on display at the Museum of Osteolgy is only his second biggest accomplishment.
So do you agree? Disagree? Let me know if you have a bone to pick with the list or just go visit the museum and make your own list!
