Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum

Cervus elaphus

If I could upload all 195 photos of this elk leg at one time, I would (should I start a flickr?!).  I never thought I would clean anything as disgusting as the llama skull with the badly infected dental impaction, but this traumatic elk leg takes the trophy for foulest thing underneath the fume hood this side of the century.  

Dave initially suspected the growth was the result of some type of bacterial infection, perhaps due to a gunshot wound.  I quickly discovered that it must have been a badly infected traumatic injury after pulling out many spliters of bones within the wound site.  After I separated the muscle tissue still holding the two parts of the ulna and radius together, we realized it looked as if the bone was regrowing on both ends not to fuse together, but to act as a new joint.  The thin splinters of bone imbedded within the damaged bones could be parts of the ulna, but we have yet to identify all of them.  

I wish I had the scientific language to articulate the severity and uniqueness of this injury.  It took me about five hours to get all of the bones separated and cleaned, but parts of the injured bone are far too foul for the dermestid colony — I found them full of dead maggots, and anything that maggots have touched the dermestid will usually not eat.  I had to put it directly in a bath of hydrogen peroxide, and tomorrow it is not going to be pretty, but it will be worth it if it means I don’t have to boil this rotten thing!