Rounding off our blog posts from this years Work Experience Student is Fern. Here is what Fern had to say:

As an A-level student, planning to study Biology at University, the time spend looking at human and animal bones was excellent.

I enjoyed seeing how trauma and pathology can be identified and used to tell a story, for example a healed oblique fracture of a tibia and fibula which can be seen by the large amount of new bone growth (photo 1). Another example of this was a horse spine which had its vertebrae fused by a disease in its life causing its excessive growth (photo 2).

But bone wasn’t all about doom and death because there were several beautifully crafted bone trinkets and tools such as pins, whistles and even a dice (photo 3).

The variety I saw and worked with made this a great experience.

An individual with a healed oblique fracture of a tibia and fibula on the right compared to the healthy left

Spondylosis Deformas resulting in ankylosis of the vertebrae aka poorly horse with vertebra fused together

Worked Bone items including pins, a whistle and a die