Not a lot of people are going to be articulating bear skeletons, but if you were – this is the manual you would want. Bear skeletons are fascinating because the anatomy of a standing bear is so similar to our own. The skinned-out hands and feet are sometimes turned in as homicide remains. This manual has detailed illustrations of bear bones, including all the carpals, and tarsals from the hands and feet. Just to avoid such confusion it now has comparative illustrations of human vs. bear hands and feet. This is the step by step process once used by a grade school to do a museum quality skeletal mount of a bear.
Watch a short introduction to Lee Post's work below:
A thirty-year veteran of bone-building, Lee Post's interest in building skeletons started when The Pratt Museum in the Alaskan town of Homer acquired a 17-foot beaked whale that the staff had collected and cleaned. This led to fifteen years of building up the osteology collection at the museum by salvaging, preparing, and often articulating animal skeletons.
In the mid-'90s, came a three-year high school/museum collaborative project in which Post worked with high school students on first articulating a 41-foot Sperm Whale skeleton they had collected and cleaned, then half a dozen other skeletons. Since that project, his focus has been working mostly with schools and students and creating written manuals that can help others who might want to do similar projects.