Here’s a room I’ve never posted about before — the Skull/Sheep room, where we keep the majority of our Ovis skulls and full skeletons. The UMZM has an extensive collection of these special bovids, the majority belonging to bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis), but we also have a few specimens of Dall sheep (Ovis dalli) and a few domestics (Ovis aries). The huge curls on the trophy mount belong to Ovis ammon, the argali or mountain sheep, which is the largest of all wild sheep species and wanders the highlands of Asia.
I think the main reason I’ve never posted photos of this room before is because the storage practices are so unintentionally terrible. We do everything we can to ensure longevity of our specimens, however, the overcrowding has gotten obscene in that room. It flooded a few years ago and you can see the blue boxes are still sagging from the damage! Someday, hopefully sooner than later, we will been granted adequate space to spread out these skulls and discontinue the real-world Jenga game we’re forced to play in there every day. Until then, these literally are the skeletons in our closet.
Reblogged from thebrainscoop with 96 notes