‘Mystery bone’ leaves rangers ‘stumped’ in Alaska. Can you guess what left it behind?
Ready for a fun “brain game”? Katmai National Park & Preserve in Alaska has you covered — in “mystery bones.”
Park officials shared photos of a series of bones that had “stumped” rangers and archeologists and encouraged the park’s fans to guess what animal it came from on Facebook.
“The Katmai archeologists have no idea what kind of bone this is or what kind of animal it came from,” the park said in the Jan. 29 post, the last mystery bone in the series. “The size is 1.5-2 inches long, or about the size of a Roma tomato.”
Several people guessed it was a vertebrae, with one wondering whether it could be from “a wolf or medium sized animal.”
Several others guessed it came from some kind of prehistoric reptile like a snake, a T-Rex or a velociraptor.
The park plans to reveal the correct answer on Thursday, Jan. 30. The previous bones in the series came from marine mammals.
The first was a lumbar vertebrae from a seal, “likely a harbour seal,” the park said Jan. 17 on Facebook.
The next was a right sea otter humerus, followed by a seal pelvis and then a fragment of a “Porpoise Maxilla, likely Harbor Porpoise (the bone to which the upper teeth attach),” the park posted on Facebook.
“Archeologists at Katmai go to sites knowing ‘it’s not what you find, it’s what you find out!’” the park said in one of the previous posts.
“Animal bones may not be what you come to Katmai to see, but they are important for archeologists who use these bones to reconstruct what has been traditionally hunted in the area,” the park said. “This gives us a view into aspects of life like food production, making of furs and hides, and bone tool production to name a few.”
This story was originally published January 29, 2025 at 6:28 PM with the headline "‘Mystery bone’ leaves rangers ‘stumped’ in Alaska. Can you guess what left it behind?."
