Thursday, June 02, 2022

Life and Death Close to the Bone



Skulls Unlimited International
is located on the outskirts of Oklahoma City, and for several decades it has been the world's leading supplier of museum-quality skulls and skeletons to schools, museums, and collectors.

The company, founded in 1986, cleans and whitens more than 50,000 skulls per year. The main building houses a 7,000-square-foot Museum of Osteology and a gift shop with some 300 full skeletons and 400 skulls on display.

In a second building can be found a dizzying array of wildlife -- deer, elk, lions, bears, turtles, baboons, warthogs, beaver -- in various states of being defleshed, boiled, bleached, and eaten by carrion beetles.


One room over
, skilled articulators sort through sacks of bones and lay them out for reassembly into fully mounted pieces.

A simple fox is 200 bones that have to be together in precise order, with wires, rods, and glue.

Skulls unlimited will also do your pet dog or cat, starting at $995 for an articulated mount. A pointer, in full point, will run about $1,800.


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