Owl Pelt Dissection

In this lab my partner and i dissected an owl pelt from a barn owl. Picking apart the bones hair and other objects of that nature from the pelt to then put back together the bones of the creatures that owl had eaten that night. Easier said than done, this task took long minutes of pulling back hair and feathers from a pelt to uncover little bones, mostly broke, then putting them together like a forensic team working for the FBI. My partner and i made the connection of the bones in the pelt to the bones of a vole, which is like a small mouse like animal. With an incomplete skeleton and little evidence we inferred the bones were vole bones by the shapes and sizes of some of the bones found. Such bones like the shape of the scapula bone, shaped more heart like and indented in the middle by another protruding bone to connect to the clavicle of the vole. Shown in the photo below.

Another example we found was that the radius bone we found in the pelt had features like the voles of a splitting in the middle of the bone but yet connected towards the end which only appears in the vole radius. Shown in the photo below.

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the Human Skeleton and the Vole skeleton are similar in 3 ways the vertebrae of the vole simulates the thoracic part of the vertebrata of a human by its curvature and ability to bend, another similarity between the two is the shoulder blade of the vole resembles the scapula of a human in the way its bone structure curves around the clavicle enabling it to move its shoulder in almost a 360 degree nature, final similarity between them is the rub cage of the vole and the rib cage of a human, the two rib cages align perpendicular to the spin and engulf the inner body of the animal to then protect and structure the body.

Differences between the two skeletal systems besides the matter of size is one, the vole does not seem to have any type of hip bone compared to the human who has the entire ischum and illium. another diffrence is that the skull of the Vole has a larger mandible and extending past the maxium of the head, probably for eating advantages. last difference between the two is the metacarpals of the vole are much longer than the ones on a human,probably for climbing and running easier for the vole, yet the human doesn't need to run from pray or invaders. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skeleton

http://www.photonesta.com/vole-skeleton-chart.html