Skeletons help students solve anatomy puzzles

WASILLA — Noel Bowe once thought the bones of a moose’s back leg were just about the same as those in a moose’s front leg. She learned otherwise recently while helping assemble a moose skeleton at Wasilla High School.

“I realized the back leg does something different, has different movement than the other one does,” said the 17-year-old, pointing to the moose’s pebble-like carpal bones. “The front leg has these five joints and the back leg has four.”

Noel is a student in one of Faith Brunnhoelzl’s anatomy and physiology classes, which has been assembling moose, wolf and bear skeletons from portable boxed kits checked out from teacher Tim Lundt of Mat-Su Career and Technical High School.

Students learned that the mosaic of tiny carpal bones enables more articulate movement not only for moose but for a variety of creatures, including bears, wolves and humans.

“I like the comparison part of it, they get so much more out of it,” Brunnhoelzl said of Lundt’s Moose-, Bear- and Wolf-in-a-Box kits. “This is getting them to realize the similarities and differences between ungulates, predators and humans, too. They can see we have the same bones, adapted to the functions of the organisms.”

Lundt first started putting together fixed skeletons in 1996, from road-killed animals. He transitioned into making portable collections of animal bones that elementary, middle or high-school students could assemble on lightweight metal armatures, using a detailed manual, hot glue and rubber bands. His collection now includes two moose, two bears and two wolves.

“Myself, I can put a moose together in an hour,” Lundt said. “The bear and wolf take more time, maybe two hours, because there’s more hot-glueing.”

Lundt received $8,500 this year from the Society for Science in the Public fellowship program for moose surveys, moose-vehicle collision density maps and other studies; he can receive more SSP grant money for three additional years, for a total of $34,000. Toshiba awarded $5,000 in grant money as well, Lundt said, for moose surveys, moose-vehicle collision maps and density maps of Knik-Goose Bay Road and the Parks Highway.

Over a period spanning 2001 and 2006, Lundt said, more than 13 moose were killed, per mile, between Church Road and two miles past Pittman Road on the Parks Highway. A $12,500 Alaska Department of Fish and Game grant paid years ago for producing manuals and DVDs.

The manual for the moose skeleton contains detailed drawings of each part of the moose’s body and assembly instructions. It also explains how to take apart a moose and clean, degrease and bleach its bones.

Lundt is now seeking grant money to replace aging skeletons and craft new ones to keep up with demand. It will take about $5,000 to make six more skeletons, Lundt said, including the cost of materials, coating skeletons with epoxy, making the metal frames and constructing the wood boxes for holding the skeletons.

Lundt teaches older kids how to field dress road-killed moose and process and store the meat, which goes to charities. Local mushers receive skin, organs and whatever else is left over from butchering the meat and salvaging the skeletons.

“I bet in excess of 1,000 kids have put those skeletons together,” Lundt said. “They’re in hot demand.”

The students in Brunnhoelzl’s class last week clustered in small groups around white-painted frames, fitting together and then skewering lumbar, thoracic and cervical vertebrae with metal rods. One group assembled the spine of a wolf. Another parsed a moose’s spine.

“These are thoracic, they’re going into the lumbar. This is a transitional spot,” said Blake Vignola, 18, as he, Chelbie Jay, Mickayla Monson, Kaelynn Granus-Sturdevant, David Parker and Forest Sparks compared their manuals with the bones of a male wolf they were fitting together on the floor.

Blake said what he learns about skeletons and how they fit together will help him reach his goal of being an astrobiologist.

“This tells me how life organisms work,” he said. “If I ever want to find out about life on other planets, I have to find out how it starts on this planet.”

The sight of moose bones is familiar to Rebecca Aubert, 16, who has helped her father butcher moose and caribou and someday wants to work as a diesel mechanic.

“The different bones, you can see how it’s similar to the human bones,” she said.

Rell Sturdevant, 17, and Krista Gillson, 18, worked intently on the tiny bones of the right front foot of a wolf. “We’re treating them like puzzle pieces,” Rell said. “If they fit together, they usually go together.”

Ashton Ward held a moose leg in one hand and a hot-glue gun in the other. It was her second try assembling the parts of the leg.

“This is the foot bone, and this is the ankle,” she said. “I put it together but it wasn’t quite right.”

James McWhorter, 16, said one aspect of the moose skeleton particularly surprised him.

“The tail is a lot longer than it looks on a moose,” he said.

The students in Brunnhoelzl’s class spent about two hours over as many days piecing, glueing and rubber-banding the intricate collections of bones — a formidable task involving about 135 bones included in the moose kit and about 200 bones in each of the wolf and bear kits.

“Eventually they all do fit together, it just takes some patience,” Noel Bowe said.