Hello San Fransisco! Collecting more monitor lizard hyoid thesis data via a Charles Stearns Grant in Aid for Herpetology. What a productive month July was.
Anyone case to guess what this pink thing is?
Hint: This specimen is native to planet earth....
Oh happy, productive days. These guys let visiting researchers work as late as they want, AND come in on weekends. What a world.
Visiting the herp collection at the California Academy of Sciences. Objective: To study the monitor lizard skeleton. In particular, the hyoid apparatus.
Their famous white gator.
Examining as many monitor lizard species and individuals as I can for my thesis.
Anatomical target-> The hyoid apparatus. This, in case you couldn't guess, is Varanus komodoensis. That's spanish, I mean SCIENCE, for Komodo Dragon.
I was lucky enough to add an outgroup to my monitor-lizard-hyoid-project sample while on a snake hunting trip in Trinidad. Why was I in Trinidad? Because herpetologist John Murphy is an extremely nice guy. John publishes extensively on the herpetofauna of Trinidad and Tobago and he prefers to use as many eyes as possible when scanning the roads and forests for wildlife. So, I was brought along to help search. In between field ventures, John had some business in the The Univerisity of the West Indies Zoology Museum and I tagged along and was productive in my own capacity. A win win!
The Univerisity of the West Indies Zoology Museum is in St. Augustine, Trinidad and Mike Rutherford is the righteous hombre/curator who allowed me to dissect this juvenile black and white tegu (Tupinambis teguixin).
