Social media for skeletons 💀💀💀 by Kristina Killgrove
Nicole Kidman as Dr. Kay Scarpetta in Amazon Prime's Scarpetta Bones was fundamentally a TV show about young professionals figuring out how to be the adults in the (big, scary, murdery) room and how to form lasting relationships in spite of their jobs. So it was fine that forensics took a back seat to the lives of Brennan, Booth, and the gang -- most of whom were never featured in the Kathy Reichs…
Started watching Northern Exposure, since I didn't see it the first time around. In this episode, a former Russian spy tells Maurice he has his secret KGB file and pulls it out of his briefcase. I know it was filmed 35 years ago, long before Google translate was a thing, but mixing up the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets is a pretty hilarious mistake. Love the "Top Secret" typed in Greek letters!
So these Nazca aliens. Man. I thought we'd all made memes and moved on. But here comes Cliff Miles declaring there are 8 to 11 individuals and they're a new species in the genus Kosmosidae. LOL. He's got a 266-page (yes, really) paper discussing the purported aliens' anatomy, and it's a doozy. And by that, I mean his osteological terminology is atrociously bad and his ability to identify random…
Three different bioarchaeologists alerted me to this absolute clusterf*ck of bones in Saturday's Telegraph : I feel like I should be asking... are any of the bones actually correct? I guess the femora look fine. But the lower legs, the pelvis, all of the arm bones are completely wrong. I don't have the heart to zoom in on the ribs and shoulder girdle. Didn't anyone at the Historic Royal Palaces…
Over on my personal Facebook page, I often post snippets from people who email me, a semi-regular feature called What's in KK's Email? This is how I laugh at and offload my stress at getting cranky, mean, or mansplainy emails, usually about something I've written for Forbes. But occasionally, What's in KK's Email features emails that start like this: " Your 2015 Forbes article about online 3D…
As I was writing my resignation letter last week to the Society for American Archaeology, leaving my post as chair of a committee in light of the massive failure of staff and board members in the wake of a serious sexual harassment issue, I reflected on the fact that it was the second time in a year that I was bailing on something that used to be very important to me. Exactly one year ago, I quit…
Chris Polt made me this amazing meme. I love it. Last night, @SAAorg blocked me on Twitter. I figured it was coming -- after resigning my position as the Media Relations Committee chair in light of the #SAA2019 #MeToo fiasco earlier this month, I've been vocal about changes that are necessary for the Society to repair its relationship with its members. Not just on Twitter, either. I've written…
My name tag from the 2018 SAA conference in D.C. Since 2017, I have been the chair of the Media Relations Committee of the Society for American Archaeology. And essentially since I started, I have been frustrated by the general intransigence of the organization and their reticence to change, particularly on the part of the SAA staff. So when the SAA failed to immediately respond on Thursday, April…
When I started writing for Forbes in May of 2015, one of my goals was to diversify media coverage of bioarchaeology news. There wasn't a whole lot of it to begin with, but since I was at a regional public university at the time, I knew that as I kept writing, I wanted to talk up research by people who didn't have access to the kinds of PR that faculty at R1s have. I also did set out to diversify…
Bioarchaeologist Sonia Zakrzewski is currently traveling in the U.S. and sent me this picture from the Penn Museum of their Beth Shemesh burial: I agree with her that those scapulae are weeeeeeird. Not only is that one on the right side pointing the wrong way, but I think it's also a left scapula. The vertebrae are odd as well - are they subadult? Or just mixed up? My initial reaction to the…
This screenshot from the TV show Ozark (S02E06) was sent to me by Rosie Bongiovanni Tullos and Sara Juengst, both biological anthropologists. Neither could believe just how very VERY wrong this is: Let's start from the top, shall we? Those clavicles... the scapula... not sure why the ribs are placed like that... upside down vertebrae... upside down humeri and radius... zero wrist bones... and the…
Over on Instagram, biological anthropology graduate student Maya Miljević tagged me in an image from a published article, asking her followers "What's wrong in this picture? I mean, how can anyone let a photo like this be accepted in a scientific journal?" The upside down clavicles are cliché at this point, but the backwards elbows get me every time -- I mean, how do your arms bend? What else do…
Two upcoming presentations at the Museo de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, are highlighted in this poster forwarded to me by Maite García-Collado: The skeleton in the image is labeled as a "female burial of Aizpea, in Aribe." Google image searching for those keywords turns up a few photos from what is presumably a museum display at the Museo de Navarre in which the bones are arranged the same way. Of…
From bioarchaeologist Megan Perry come a couple screen shots from Blade Runner 2049 : Oh hey, the scapulae are upside down with the socket part of the ball-and-socket joint pointing in towards the middle of the body. Total week 1 rookie osteology mistake! The clavicles are a bit hard to see, but are also wrong, with the lateral end weirdly pointing to the middle of the body. Hai, Princess…
Spotted by longtime PbO reader Elizabeth Monroe on Tumblr is this anatomical imagining of Wolverine's skeleton: Apparently this member of the X-Men has his hand and foot mixed up, and also has a mysterious bone in his leg called the fibia . Sorry, Marvel, but you need an osteologist. --- Previous Installments of Who needs an osteologist? Voodoo Doughnut needs an osteologist. WikiHow needs an…
Hi, ladies. Can we talk about pants for archaeological fieldwork again? Last time we chatted, in May of 2017, I got loads of ideas about what to wear in Naples in July. Figured I'd revisit it to let you all know how I fared, what I'm going to bring this year, and see if you have any additional suggestions or updates. Last summer, I tried to get some free clothes out of companies to try out in the…
We took the kids to Universal Studios in Orlando this week, since it was their spring break. A new Voodoo Doughnut just opened on the City Walk there, so of course we had to introduce the kids to their sugary concoctions. As we sat and ate, quickly succumbing to sugar comas, I looked up at the skeletons decorating the place, smack in the middle of the store: My eye started twitching. Oh no.…
I was out of town giving a public talk last week when I got this picture along with a text from my husband: "Zooarch consult plz." That's my 8-year-old on the right along with their BFF. They were traipsing through the small patch of woods behind our house and found some... dead stuff. Squinting at my phone, I typed back that there was a turtle and maybe a small dog or something, but that I'd…
This latest entry in 'Who needs an osteologist?' was sent in by grad student Mar Vergara Martín, who happened to be looking for information on ulnar avulsion fractures and came across this WikiHow page on how to classify a radial fracture : Mmmmm, nope. It also says, "Distinguish the radius from the ulna. The radius is the larger of the two forearm bones. When the palm of the hand faces forward,…
Bioarchaeologist Kori Filipek noticed this amazing graphic on the Runner's World Facebook page this week: And the original graphic, via Twitter : I imagine it would take quite a while for a runner to get back on the road with a knee injury that involved.... a replacement of his leg bones with the elbow joint of a kid? There are a bunch of comments on the post from people who also noticed the…
Bioarchaeologist Sonia Zakrzewski was at London's Science Museum and snapped these images to share on Twitter: And bioarch Twitter responded with predictable shock: The whole skeleton needs sorting out and laying out properly. Or laying out as excavated. But not this mixed up mess. — Dr Sonia Zakrzewski (@Sonia_Zak) January 1, 2018 Also, I'm not 100% certain, but that looks a lot like C1 in…
Every time I teach our ANT2511 - Introduction to Biological Anthropology course, I include a fill-in-the-blank question on one of the last exams that reads as follows: "List one thing you learned this semester about biological anthropology or human evolution that surprised you." I make it worth a couple of points, and every student always responds to it. For me, it's both a way to gauge that they…
Spoiler alert: this episode of "Who needs an osteologist?" has a special twist at the end. This weekend, archaeologist Steph Evelyn-Wright posted the following to Twitter: Who needs an osteologist? Saw this today in Bath. The clavicles look the wrong way round to me. @DrKillgrove @BOSotonUni @Sonia_Zak @RomanBathsBath . #osteology #bioarchaeology #whoneedsanosteologist #oops…
Today's installment of "Who needs an osteologist?" comes courtesy bioarchaeologist Megan Perry, who was watching a Science Channel clip on the skeletons found in the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent at Teotihuacan. Here's the clip: (if the embedded YouTube video doesn't work for you, this one might ) So, what did you notice? I rolled my eyes at the radii, which were upside down when being held,…
One of the reasons that I've been posting very little here lately is that I am gearing up to go into the field in July, for some excavation, 3D modeling, and osteological analysis at the site of Oplontis outside of Pompeii. My goal for the summer is to blog here about that fieldwork, although it'll likely take the form of writing about work-life balance. You see, I'm bringing my family to the…