2019_08_03_cemetery-bones_01 - a photo on Flickriver

2019_08_03_cemetery-bones_01

These are bones exhumed by burrowing animals at a cemetery in Michigan where my sister and I went to visit the graves of relatives.

The cemetery, which I'll leave un-named, is sited on moraine dumped by at the edge the vast glacial ice cap, which also left the Great Lakes, in a long pause in its retreat, completed only about 10,000 years ago. That moraine is mostly sand, meaning it's easy both for planting remains, and for digging them up as well. (A geology map calls the cemetery's hills "glacial outwash sand and gravel.")

The graves from which bones were tossed, outside holes in the ground, were all either unmarked or hard to guess. There was a fair amount of natural slumping of soils on the cemetery's hills, due partly to the hills' geologic youth, and partly to burrowing animal activity—no doubt taking advantage of underground cavities in the hill's graves, most of which were dug and planted prior to the current convention of putting caskets in concrete vaults.

Most of the bones I saw were obviously ribs. I couldn't tell what the others were, but perhaps some readers will know. The graves in these parts of the cemetery were all from the mid to late 1800s. The bones were likely well preserved by the nature of the soil, which is typically alkaline with young glacial moraine.

I later shared some of these photos with the cemetery office, which was glad to hear from me, and said they would quickly re-inter the remains. They also said the likely burrowers were foxes. (This link and others like it confirm the suspicion.) All the holes, typical of fox dens, were on the slopes of the cemetery's hills, rather than at the tops of bottoms. Note the skull between two human ribs. I checked and it's definitely from a fox.

Some rights reserved

Taken on: August 3, 2019

Tags:

2019_08_03

cemetery

geology

bones

ribs

exhumed

foxes

fox

fox burrow

burrow

fox den

fox dens

fox hole

Michigan

Wisconsin glaciation

glacier

outwash

soil

sand

dig

diggings

forensics

body farm « less

Sets appears in: • 2019_08_03 Exhumed bones in a Michigan cemetery

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark III, f/14.0, 1/400 sec, 32mm, ISO 320 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 5D Mark III
Aperture:	f/14.0
Exposure Time:	0.003 sec (1/400)
Focal Length:	32mm
ISO:	320
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Program AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Spot
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Show full info

Stats: 1,481 views

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder