My Skeleton Work (WARNING! Dead animals and high res photos)

hi, this stuff is great. I was wondering if you done any work preserving the skeletons you've cleaned in plastic resin. the results are great and the cost is low; the most expensive part is silicone for moldmaking. with your resources, it could be a nice side business. I do a lot of moldmaking and resin-pouring and it is a fairly simple process.
thanks for sharing your awesome "hobby"
 
Sploke said:
Very cool - I helped my friend gut and skin his dead pet iguana in college, he did the same kind of thing, independent study with a professor using these beetles. So do you reconstruct the skeletons and mount them? Or do they just sit in the boxes?
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Articulated skeletons look awesome, and I definitely want to do one. For universities, though, unarticulated is better. They will be put in boxes, ans the seperate elements can be looked at for studies. For example, right now I am doing an independent study with the same professor. The study is on hawk skulls (to put it really simply). To get our data, we used a special website that lists the collections of every university and museum. We were able to email each university, and ask to borrow the skulls to photograph them.
I would like to do an articulated specimen eventually. My goal is to get a horse, but most people don't want to donate thier dead pet horse to be disembowled and fed to bugs. :)
 
illgore_trout said:
hi, this stuff is great. I was wondering if you done any work preserving the skeletons you've cleaned in plastic resin. the results are great and the cost is low; the most expensive part is silicone for moldmaking. with your resources, it could be a nice side business. I do a lot of moldmaking and resin-pouring and it is a fairly simple process.
thanks for sharing your awesome "hobby"
Click to expand...

No, we don't use any silicone coating. For people who are using the bones as decoration, coating is a great idea. For a university, we don't want any kind of coating that could hide features of the bone, chemically change the surface, or anything else like that.
 
biomajorstudent said:
I hope to get more donations! A lot of universities who run these (usually they are larger, but we are just starting up) work with local zoos and aquaria to get really rare and unique specimens. My one Prof was telling me about a time when he was in grad school (at a different university) when a nearby zoo had an elephant die. They asked if the U wanted it, and they accepted, of course. They had no place to put it, so they had a crane lift it onto the roof, and let it rot away to get the skeleton. He said there were stalactites of fat dripping down the sides of the building, and you had to hold your breath when you walked near the building or on the roof.
I've actually been asking around on here for specimens too. I'm always looking for large fish, reptiles, etc.
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Whoa.........wait..........hold the phone!! :eek3:
There was a dead rotting elephant on the roof of a building? Completely gross but so interesting....
Could you imagine flying by in an airplane or helicopter and seeing a dead elephant on a rooftop? :22_yikes: Weeeeeeeeird.
 
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