Collodion du jour - 352 & 353

Tintypes from "A collection of somewhat random specimens".

On our first camping trip of the summer, the girls and I found a pretty complete skeleton by the river near our campground. It took us a while to get all the small bones out of the ground, but it was much fun. Just like digging for a long lost treasure. After bleaching the skeleton, Enora decided we should reconstruct it. Not an easy task. First we had to identify the animal, which we were able to do with the help of John Demboski at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. This is the cranium of an ill-fated beaver.
We've gone as far as putting the jaws back together, then got overwhelmed by the cheer number of bones and our poor understanding of beaver morphology.