Stripped to the bone
Video presented by Jo Cooper
Dr Jo Cooper talks us through skeleton preparation, one of her responsibilities as a curator in the Bird Group, Natural History Museum at Tring, Hertfordshire. See for yourself how we get from whole bird to cleaned skeleton, using dissection and flesh-eating beetles to get down to the bones. We start with the body of a large sandhill crane in the laboratory and finish in the collections where our newly prepared skeletons can be used by researchers interested in the anatomy of modern and fossil birds. But be warned, this isn’t one for the faint-hearted.
- Presented by: Jo Cooper
- Date: 20 June 2006
- Duration: 8:24
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The Museum's smallest members of staff are our flesh-eating beetles, Dermestes maculates, who strip carcasses to the bone.