The beetles did a wonderful job on the skeleton. For the most part the skeleton is very much intact. I'm very happy about that because when I boil a skeleton it comes out as a jumbled mess and I have to figure out every tiny bone. Also, I have always lost a couple of small bones during the boiling process but so far it looks like I may have all of the bones this time. I recently whitened the bones but will probably whiten some of the bones further. Basically, all that is left for me to do is reshape parts and glue everything together. Here is the squirrel in a box :)
Here are a few close-ups:This is the head. The lower mandible is not attached right now. If you look closely you can see what I am pretty sure is the hyoid bone. It is very thin and delicate but as you can see the beetles left it intact. You can also see the atlas bone at the base of the skull.
This is one of the forearms. The best thing about my beetles is that they will keep the tiny hand and feet bones together so I do not have to solve that puzzle every time I work on a skeleton. 
This is the pelvis and some vertebra. I have started to glue the pieces of the pelvis back together already. The pelvis was broken when the squirrel was killed.
This is a back foot.
This is the tail. I decided to go ahead and shape it while it was drying. 
This all brings me to how I would like to pose the squirrel. I plan to position it something like this:
I borrowed this image from www.natures-desktop.com where they have tons of free pictures to use as computer wallpaper.
That's really cool! The beetles do a fabulous job. Definitely better than boiling. Can't wait to see the finished product.
ReplyDeletethank you so much for posting the hand and foot pictures! exactly what I needed!
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