Christian Meyer

OsteoArchaeologist | Dr. ☠️ Bioarchaeology, Funerary Archaeology, Taphonomy, Palaeopathology & Zooarchaeology | All about skeletal remains & their context.

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

@ICAZ_News One of the coolest animal bones I encountered so far is still this burnt bear claw I found in the cremation burial of a 1st cent. AD Germanic "princess". Lots of gold and stuff, but this is the real highlight of course! 🐻🦴

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

🙃 TFW you randomly, of course late in the evening, stumble upon a long-forgotten email (from last week) that contains a 35-page-proof that needed to be checked and sent back ... (checks dates) ... yesterday.

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

@SimonVerdegem Just a random thought, as the letter looks like the modern German Telekom logo... maybe something to do with "Telegraphentruppe"? They used the letter "T" as abbreviation on uniform parts...

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

@NowDrK Ah, ok... Here, the eburnation is actually on the supero-medial margin of the fossa olecrani, where the top of the detached tip of the olecranon apparently touched the humerus and rubbed against it. Never seen that before...

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

🦴🔍 I guess I just found my first case (as far as I remember) of smooth and shiny eburnation outside of an actual joint surface... A curious case of a non-united olecranon fracture. Has anyone encountered something similar before?

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

⚰️💀🦴 Of course the skeleton that is the least interesting in pure archaeological terms from this little trench is by far the most interesting in osteo(archaeo)logical terms...

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

@SolSalega Well, that is a very curious one indeed... wonder what happened there to crt this knd of txt with randomly missing lttrs... 🧐 🤔 😀

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

🦴🐩 The problem with finding carnivore gnaw marks on prehistoric human skeletal remains is... once you have convinced yourself that they are actually real, you start to see them everywhere...

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

@ofendlessbooks Yes, indeed, although it is just a random anatomical variant in this skeleton... I guess the more interesting story here is being found lying prone in an Iron Age ditch with carnivore gnawing damage all over the ribs and leg bones... but who knows...

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

🦷 Does anyone have any experience with short root anomaly in maxillary canines in archaeological human skeletons? I have seen short rooted maxillary incisors before, but not a really short rooted canine... until today. Any hints welcome... 🧐

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

Good luck little guys 🐜🐜🐜

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

@DrKillgrove Yes, please?

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

☀️💦🦴 Trying to survive the heat by adopting a semi-aquatic lifestyle... the very first step already revealed a nice and unexpected find...

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

@jens2go Just a single Karl May on the shelf? 🧐 (or are the others safely out of shot?)

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

@PaoloViscardi Are you really sure it is not a distal femur? In my experience with archaeological bones the proximal surface of the unfused tibial shaft is usually quite flat. If there are large, (somewhat) spikey protrusions, like here, it is usually the distal end... ?

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

@MermaidsPurseJ @Hugh_Willmott So, basically, only the (admittedly quite prominent) teeth/tusks turn this animal head into an actual boar?

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

@Hugh_Willmott Very sweet... 😉 But I'm really curious about animal representations in Early Medieval "art". How far have you come in finding a parallel in archaeological terms (ie other contemporaneous artifacts)? Just curious...

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

@BenkertHelene @M_Marqueta @DrHanneke Just for good measure, here is a nice Neolithic one from a human collective burial context. Maybe it was used as a pendant there and then? I also once found a random tarsometatarsus in a pile of medieval human bones in a cemetery, maybe the remains of an amulet? Who knows... 🙃

[Christian Meyer @OsteoARC]

@BenkertHelene @ZooarchLabSheff @ICAZ_News @zooarchanimals @HumAnE_Arch Phalanges of a large raptor (=talon) I guess?