• Question from:Gage

I know a lot of skulls, but I've never seen one like this. Can you tell me what it is?

Post's pictures

image.jpg, 1.83 mb, 2592 x 1936

image.jpg, 1.85 mb, 2592 x 1936

Photo
  • Horniman Museum, London, UK
  • Posts: 1,105

Hi Gage,

This is not a skull, it's the synsacrum of a bird. It's a little hard to identify the species from the photos and without knowing a bit more about where you found it, but it looks like it could be from a chicken.

Photo
  • At home in Ruardean, Gloucestershire, England
  • Posts: 942

BTW., the synsacrum is the hip region: all the verterbrae in that region fuse together, and the hip bones fuse to those, yielding the single object you found. Mistaking them for skulls is very common -- my wife made the same mistake just the other day.