Just bones
In Just bones, you get to experience skeletons up close, from the largest animals to the very smallest. The exhibition shows how bones have shaped life on Earth, and what each skeleton can tell us about an animal's life and death.
What can you see in the exhibition?
In Just bones, you can see:
- Skeletons up close, from the largest animals to the very smallest
- Skeletons of mammals, birds and fish
- How bone has evolved over 400 million years
- What researchers can read from a single bone
What is bone?
Without bone, many animals, humans included, would look quite different. In the exhibition, you get to see the skeletons up close, from the very largest in the animal kingdom to the very smallest.
The University Museum's bone collection contains 15,000 skeletons of mammals, birds and fish, and more than 3 million bone fragments from archaeological and geological excavations.
400 million years of evolution
Bone is a tough, adaptable material shaped by more than 400 million years of evolution. It is a trait all vertebrates have inherited from a shared, water-dwelling ancestor, binding them together into one great family.
The evolution of bone was crucial to vertebrates' conquest of both land and air. Bone heals, gives the body shape and support, protects the internal organs and makes movement possible on land, in water and in the air. Without the anatomical diversity of bone, the world would look quite different.
The grave is not as silent as you might think
When skin and flesh are removed from a dead animal, the bones can take on a new life. Since prehistoric times, people have collected bones, and still do. Every bone in a museum collection represents a story that can take us through history and millions of years of evolution.
Researchers are like detectives on the hunt for the smallest clue. With ever more methods and analyses, they uncover information hidden in bone, and it turns out that the grave is not as silent as you might think.