Repeating Images: Bear Skulls and Triceratops Skulls

On my trip to recent trip to Bozeman, I had a few simple goals beyond the one for which I had ventured to the town: see taxidermy, find a comic book store, play some pinball. Of course The comic scene was kind of sad and there was no pinball to be found for miles. Go fig. But I did manage to find some interesting taxidermy mounts. And I saw dinosaurs.

But it was only when I was reviewing my pictures of my venture did I find this odd piece for my occasionally updated theme of "Repeating Images."

The first picture is of various bear skulls from the local hunters of the region. They are neatly displayed mounted in a polite row along a wall in an outdoors store in downtown Bozeman. While it is hard to see, each skull has a number and date on the top written into the skull with dark ink. As far as I can tell, it represents the date of the kill and the statistics of the animal.

The second image is from the Museum of the Rockies and it shows the morphology of triceratops' skulls from adolescence to adulthood. While writing on these fossils is would be forbidden, the paster casts used to preserve these specimen while they are in transport from field to museum or university for study are often scribbled upon with various stats and labels to identify the bones.