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Bone Building Books
Step-by-Step Guides for the Preparation and Articulation of Animal Skeletons
By Lee Post (a.k.a. Boneman)
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Sea Lion Skeleton Articulation Projects Fort Bragg, CA
The Articulation of Sea Lion Skeletons for the
NOYO Center for Marine Science, Fort Bragg, California
In July 2015, I was invited to go to Fort Bragg, California, to help articulate a couple sea lion skeletons for the NOYO Center for Marine Science. I had never before met the director, Sheila Seamans, and was going to be working with Mike DeRoos and his wife Michi Main, who are the top skeleton articulation specialists in Canada. (I had met Mike once before in Victoria, BC, as he was working on an 85-foot-long blue whale skeleton that came out as probably the nicest blue whale skeleton ever put on display. It is now at the Beaty Museum of Bio-Diversity in Vancouver, BC.). Mike and Michi and family were all there, and between everyone, it was a dream team bone building experience.
Click on the first photo to start slideshow
 Sheila Seamans, Director, Bone Enthusiast, and Volunteer Magnet. |  Michi Main - Organizer, Ultimate Mother, Seasoned Bone Builder. Kept me fueled and watered and well smiled. |  Mike DeRoos - Bone Builder Extraordinaire. |
|---|---|---|
 Michi's parents, Bonnie and Bill, masters of the gourmet meals. |  Local Kids - Mark and Layla. Mark runs the North Coast Brewing Company, an ultimate brewer with some beers and ales named after marine mammals. |  Tireless workers ... |
 ... doing tedious detailed finish-work. |  This one drove a long distance to come help on the project. |  A talented artist-type holding a couple of his finished sea lion feet. |
 Sheana, a superstar volunteer who did some fine finish work. |  Local artists came in to draw the bones and sometimes help assemble. |  Mike tweaking the hyoid bones. |
 The finished pair of sea lion skeletons . . . |  . . . and the pair of us doing the sea lion thing. |  Mike and Michi looking at the just finished bull sea lion. |
 |  Me and the agitated bull sea lion. |
Fort Bragg is a small coastal town. A town harder to get to than my hometown of Homer, Alaska! It took three plane rides and a two-hour drive to get there from Homer. Fort Bragg is a similar sized town to the one I live in. It had many of the same ingredients; interesting, ambitious, talented people, a small town can-do mentality, and a marine science center director with a volunteer magnet personality (And what a magnet! The volunteers showed up one right after another!)
We had two sea lion skeletons to do. An adult male California sea lion and a sub-adult, female Steller sea lion, both found dead in the local area (one having been shot multiple times) - we had over two dozen volunteers actively working on the skeleton with us. They ranged from interns and docents to students and parents, to business owners and curious pedestrians who wandered by. Our workshop was an old community gymnasium attached to the city hall. The mayor frequently came by, a state senator visited, and lots of curious people popped in. With such good helpers, we got both skeletons finished within the eleven days.