Huh. Is there any way to tell the species of fish by the size of vertebrae? Isn’t that one of the ways they do it with mammals? I know that the best way to ID mammals is with teeth, but I thought vertebrae shape was also a helpful diagnostic. Not so much with fishes?
@tmorgan were you able to bring this information about fish verts back to your classroom? I wonder if you can bring in modern fish verts (from a fishing trip??) and then compare, kind of like how Ashley Hall was doing the turkey bone comparison lesson on the Paleontology Education Facebook Group (you know what I’m talking about, @taorminalepore and @gsantos! but here’s the group, too! https://www.facebook.com/groups/paleontologyeducation/)