Cleaning & Identifying Skulls

[CamoCachers]

geocaching has lead to me finding lots of deceased animal parts. ive found a small deer antler, a box turtle shell, snake skin, and skulls. i dont know what it is, but i have to take this stuff along with me when i come across it. im guessing lots of other cachers have similar collections.

 

now, what id like to know. whats the best way to get the skulls cleaned? id like to put them on my computer desk, but im afraid of what may be lurking on them in way of germs. bleach and a tooth brush sound good? thats what was reccomended for us to use on the turtle shell. should we use anything to seal it after cleaning?

 

secondly, how could i identify the skulls? one is very obviously a carnivore, bout the size of a dog head. it seems a lil big for a coyote, but i believe wolves are few and far between in this area (ive never seen one, but ive seen lots of coyotes) i hope it isnt a dog!

 

second one is fairly small. my guess would be a oppossum or raccoon. id like to find out what they belonged to. any ideas where would be good to look to find out?

[+Miragee]

Too bad the search isn't working because there was someone who gave details about that. He had examples of deer skulls.

 

It might have been in the thread about finding strange things at caches.

 

If you can't find that, I guess I would just "Google" it.

[+sbell111]

Google's search still works.

[+Timber_Wolf]

If the skull is allready clean i heard that you should cook him.

But i am not sure about it.

 

Maybe you should look on an hunting page.

[+...Headless]

I've got experience at this and here is what I would recommend. I have boiled them in the past and that works quite well. After boiling you can clean them with a toothbrush. ( your WIFE'S not yours) LOL. You could also bury them near a known ant area and they will do the work for you. To identify the skulls and bones you could buy the book "SKULLS AND BONES" by Glenn Searfoss. It is an incredible book covering this subject. Good luck............The Headless Cacher

[+sbell111]

Here's a PDF on cleaning and preserving animal skulls.

[+Zzyzx Road]

I have been mounting some of hubby's deer antlers for him (saving several hundred dollars in the process!)

Lye solution (BE VERY CAREFUL!) will "eat" off any remaining meat. (EW! GROSS!) Vinegar in the boiling solution will too. While the whole skull can be bleached (also a great addition to the boiling water - just DO NOT BREATHE it!) it is easier to "clean". I have trouble with the horns discoloring to white when we want them to stay brown. THEN I use a clear water-based acrylic sealer on the whole surface. Sanding with really fine grit (or plain un-soaped steel wool) between 2 coats will make it really smooth and shiny.

 

How cool you have found something neat to collect! One of the weirdest things I saw was the whole skeleton of a field mouse that we unwrapped from an owl burp. I know there is a name for their upchucked remains, but we call them burps.

One time (BC - Before Caching) we found the remains of a ring-tailed cat, which is actually kind of rare to see around here. It is fun to look these things up and figure out the habitat!

 

Sorry for the rant...

[CamoCachers]

thanks for all the info everyone. the skulls i have are luckily already fairly clean. just a lil something on the insides. guessing brain remains i have a much better idea of how to clean them now!

 

and speaking of weird things found. i did a cache yesterday that within 10ft of it was a full blown dead goat. the area was obviously a carcass dumping area. within a 50ft circle we found 3 deer carcasses, the goat, the unidentified skull which i took with me (guessing coyote or dog?) anyways, i really want the horns off the goat. im gonna check back in a few weeks. it look fairly recently deceased. maybe in a few weeks the skull will be available with the horns attached.

[+Bill & Tammy]

I once visited the preparation room at the Field Museum which employs the use of Dermestid beetles for stripping flesh from carcasses. The odor is something else but it seemed very effective.

 

.

Edited January 2, 2006 by Bill & Tammy

[+RichardMoore]

As for identifying the skulls, the Peterson Field Guide for Mammals has pictures of skulls of dozens of mammals, from bats to whales.

Edited January 2, 2006 by RichardMoore

[+Zzyzx Road]

...just a lil something on the insides. guessing brain remains...

 

...I really want the horns off the goat. I'm gonna' check back in a few weeks. It look fairly recently deceased - maybe in a few weeks the skull will be available with the horns attached.

 

Nasty smell, if there is any protein matter left! That is another reason to seal them after...I do that because no matter how hard Hubby tries, I will still smell something...

 

If you wanted just the horns, you could cut (saw) enough of the skull plate with the horns still attached, this gives you something with which to mount it to a plaque. Otherwise, I would do like someone above suggested, bury it and let Nature's little garbage pickers clean it up for you. They do it in quite record time if you consider how small those folks really are!

 

Good luck, share some pics of these strange things! After they are cleaned of course!

[+sbell111]

I once visited the preparation room at the Field Museum which employs the use of Dermestid beetles for stripping flesh from carcasses. The odor is something else but it seemed very effective.

 

.

Am I the only one that wonders whether Bill or Tammy wrote that?

[+Isonzo Karst]

skull replicas this site sells skull replicas (sturdier for classwork), a very handy guide for checking a lot of common North American animals (and others).

Funny this topic should come up now. After finding a cache I did a bit of wandering around in the woods, including a stop by a small permanent spring. I found the carcass of a 7 point buck there. Armed with my trusty 1.5 inch leatherman mini blade I laboriously hacked the very smelly head off.

log with picture

 

My cleaning technique is drop them on large ant mounds, but I live in Florida, where the ants are quite active even in January. I can see where that might not work further north.

Be careful of bleaching and boiling, both will damage the integrity of the bone, and cause teeth to drop out.

 

I have a plan for a multi cache using the assortment of skulls I've acquired.

[+TeamGuisinger]

The absolute BEST way to clean skulls that still have meat on them is to connect them to a piece of rope or chain and throw them in a stream for a week or two. Make sure the skull wont come off in the current or when a coon or possum decide to chew on it. Also make sure it's in a stream with the depth to cover it completely, and it has to be one that runs all the time, not a seasonal water path. That alone will surprise you at how clean the small insects and such get them, if you are still worried about germs after that, a 20% bleach/water rinse and a couple hours drying in the sun will finish it off nicely.

[+Poidawg]

Bleach will eat away at the bone a bit, so if you use bleach, use a very diluted solution, putting the bone under a bucket, on a piece of burlap and lettig the beetles and other critters clean it up takes quite awhile, but it works. Boiling leaves a HORRENDOUS smell and I suggest if you wish to boil the ones you find, do it outside on the propane grill. Boiling is the fastest way to get them cleaned up.

[+olbluesguy]

Take yer animal, tie a rope or a stong cord to it, and sling it across a tree limb over that creek.

Go home and tie up some flies to resemble a maggot on about a size fourteen hook.

Get your fly rod out and sit and watch that spot for a while.not only will the fly larve clean the skull for you,but you might have a good chance at a trout.

Good Fishing.

OBG.

[+Mearth]

Dermistid beetle larvae may be available through your State U county extension office. I've used them and they work great and quickly. I laid a piece of window screen on the ground and dumped a layer of soil on it before spreading the larvae over the soil. Wrapped the skull in the whole deal and tucked it into my compost pile for a week or so. That skull didn't have a lot of tissues clinging to it, though. I don't know how long it would take for a really meaty bit. The upside: no stink, no fuss, no wicked fumes.

[+flannelman]

I know that ants will do the job. I killed a small racked buck this past deer season and I cut the horns off with a piece of the skull. I tried to remove as much as I could but there is always some left. I came back a few days later and there were ants all over the skull piece. They had the tihing almost spotless in just a few days. It was really amazing.

[+sept1c_tank]

I'm sure Huntnlady can answer your questions about cleaning skulls; she can probably help with identification, too.

[+Iowa Tom]

I have a micro inside the brain cavity of a cow skull that’s hanging from a cedar tree via a thin cable. The cache is called Dummkopf. My German grandfather used to call people he didn’t care for by that name. It means “block head.”

 

By hanging it I hope that mice don’t get at it to wear down their teeth and get the Ca 2+ and PO4 3- they need to boot. Deer antlers get eaten up by rodents pretty fast. That’s why I don’t see them very often.

 

If ever you collect a long bone (or even a skull) be prepared for a smell from any fat that’s still in the bone, especially in long bones. The fat may take a long time to get eaten up; and it reeks. I learned the hard way not to soak a cow skull in bleach then try to speed dry it in the oven! The odor (of the fat draining out) reminded me of one room in the hog processing plant where I used to work. It was where they cooked various scrap hog parts to make into fertilizer and hog feed. I managed to hold my breath every time I ran a load of split hog heads in there.

 

-it

[+Colorado Cacher]

Boil gently in saltwater. Purchase Taxidermy grade Hydrogen Peroxide from taxidermy supply and soak. Super glue loose teeth back in and spray with clear lacquer.

 

Very gross suggestion #1>>My cousin the outfitter says a person can insert the skull into a thick black trash bag and leave in the sun and over time the maggots will do the work for you.

Edited January 4, 2006 by Colorado Cacher

[+sept1c_tank]

...Very gross suggestion #1>>My cousin the outfitter says a person can insert the skull into a thick black trash bag and leave in the sun and over time the maggots will do the work for you.

I understand this method works quite well. I have heard that you can accomplish the same thing (maggots) just by burying the skull or bone (without the garbage bag) about two feet deep in dirt in a fenced area to keep away dogs, etc.

 

I have gently boiled snake and bird heads for about three hours and attained satisfactory results.

[+AuntieWeasel]

Properly cleaned, you can get a handsome penny for them on eBay.

 

I have a friend who buys skulls there, then sneaks them home to his basement workshop so his wife won't know. I always feel a bit complicit in this, since I know it and she doesn't. I also worry that he's going to be hit by a bus some day, and her last memory of him will be going down into the basement and finding the Wall of Bones.

 

I hope he hasn't built a shrine or anything.

[+Two Geeks and a GPS]

Had to do it in college for a mammology class. Boil them in a bleach water solution. Being in college, I naturally waited till the night before they were due. I had 5 skulls (mouse to deer size) in my apartment freezer for a whole semester! My roommates were thrilled!

They were even more thrilled when they learned the boiling was being done in every pot we owned and used for dinner!

Identification is usually done using teeth and there are many books/fieldguides on the subject.

[+wdfod]

Anyone easily grossed out should stop skip this post entirely.

 

When Mr. Wdfod shot his bear earlier this year we did the skull ourselves, following the instructions of the taxidermist who is making our rug.

 

We boiled it in Arm and Hammer Sal Soda until all the teeth fell out and the meat came off easily. Getting the brains out is the hardest part. On a large skull you can make a little wing shaped thing to put on a drill to scramble the brains and reduce them to small enough chunks that they will come out. Do it outdoors and spray a high pressure hose in the skull cavity. Since your skulls have been out in the elements, you're going to want to be very careful with that part.

 

We soaked ours in 40 volume hair bleach from the local beauty supply store. It is lovely. It is not bright white, more a realistic ecru. Rinse very well. We did NOT coat it in varnish since that will yellow more over the years than the skull itself will.

 

Oh, and it doesn't smell great so use the outdoor stove. You'll probably want to use a really old pot. We bought an old enamelware one at St. Vinnies for the bear skull.

 

I've seen beetled skulls, they are nice as well.

 

Maggie

 

edit: Oops, forgot to tell you to let it dry for a couple days, then superglue the teeth back in. Unfortuantlely to find them you have to sort through all the meat gunk that came off the skull. It is sort of like a puzzle to figure out where they all go. But big bear teeth only had one correct hole and one correct direction that would work.

Edited January 5, 2006 by wdfod

[+jimmyreno]

Jeffrey Dahmer had a barrel of acid in his closet, said it worked great

Edited January 5, 2006 by jimmyreno

[Pinster56]

Found this piece of spine while caching....can anybody ID it? My guess it's human......

[+Iowa Tom]

....acid....worked great

Just in case anyone does try acid, you'll end up with one rubbery skull, if anything at all. I use the acetic acid in vinegar to react with and make soluble the minerals in bone. All that is left after a few days is the collagen, which by mass makes up about a third of the bone matrix. Soak a wishbone and after three days you'll be able to tie it in a knot! Kind of like what you can do with a McDonald's french fry.

 

-it

 

By the way, the vertebra shown on the pavement was probably part of a deer. The spinous process, the part that you can can feel when running your hands down your back, appears longer than a human's is. Then again, if it were human it should be reported!

Edited January 7, 2006 by Iowa Tom

[+Colorado Cacher]

It's all fun and games until they open the trunk.

[+Morgan's Marauders]

Mothman skull

 

Any ideas on ID of this one? Or could it be the infamous Mothman?

[+Isonzo Karst]

That Mothman skull looks like a calf to me - definitely not a dog or any pedator. A young animal with almost no wear on the grinding surfaces of its molars.

[+AuntieWeasel]

I just bought a weasel skull on eBay. I'm...so ashamed.

[+Tsmola]

I also shed hunt (look for dropped deer antlers) I love how I've found a bunch of new areas thanks to geocaching.

 

Funny the first poster mentioned finding a turtle shell, I found yet another one today, proably the 5th or 6th I've found. I didn't take this one as it was in too bad of shape, but I hardly ever find deer antlers, yet I find turtle shells every year. I don't get it. There's a bunch of pics of dead deer people have found on my site under other finds.

 

Pinster56, my guess is it's a bone from a small deer. I find ones like that all the time.

[+Jones_Crew]

EWwwwwww That is just gross! Mind you I am a nurse and not much gets me....but ewwwwwwww. OK, my Dad was a hunter and would love to find bones etc., but as for me I hope that I DON'T come across any of this. For the record the first time I come across a snake I will be crying like a sissy girl!

JonesCrew

[+Davispak]

Ants are the best. they can have a skull spotless in no time. wrap in chicken wire and place on top of the hill or ant area. they will clean it completely in a day or two.