When scientists become detectives
After the bombing of Bristol Natural Sciences Museum in 1940, many specimens and their records were lost. In some cases, only the specimens themselves remained. The collections at Bristol have also been moved many times (across sites and around the current museum). This has resulted in records ending up misplaced or lost.
It’s one of the jobs of collection managers and curators to keep up-to-date accurate records of the specimens in their collections. Bristol curators have the large task of reorganising the collections and finding these lost records. This leads us to our story here: a specimen with a puzzling question that needs answering.
Quaggas are an extinct subspecies of the plains zebra. They roamed the grasslands and savannah of South Africa; more specifically south of the Vaal River in the Karoo/ ǃ’Aukarob and southern Free State Vrystaat (Afrikaans), until 1834. The animal became extinct in the wild due to excessive hunting in the 1850s and 1860s. The last quagga was a female who died in captivity at the Artis Magistra Zoo, Amsterdam, on 12 August 1883.
Quagga specimens are very rare; 23 mounted skins, seven skeletons, and some skull and foot bones are all that remain of the quagga worldwide. While quaggas are extinct, The Quagga Project aims to bring the species back from extinction by selective breeding.
Equids are a family of species which includes horses, asses (such as donkeys, kiangs, and onagers), and zebras. There are three living zebra species: the Grévy’s zebra (Equus grevyi Oustalet, 1882), the plains zebra (Equus quagga), and the mountain zebra (Equus zebra Linnaeus, 1758). The species of interest in this mystery is the quagga, one of the plains zebra subspecies.
The difficulty is that when it comes to subspecies of the plains zebra they can’t be discreetly separated and instead appear to form a continuum and so merge into one another. Even today there is debate over the number of subspecies. For clarity’s sake here, the same nomenclature that has been applied to naming the equids in the museum’s collections will be used in this piece. This is Hans Klingel’s number of six subspecies (given in order of north to south Africa):
In 1972, Dr Corbet contacted Mr Bird the natural history curator of Bristol Museum, after seeing an entry in “Rare animals in the city museum” referencing a quagga specimen in Bristol’s collection. He wanted to know the history and any other information about this specimen. This line of enquiry sparked an investigation by many experts of the Equid family. (Corbet was an academic researcher aiming to exhibit a quagga skin from the British Museum (Natural History)). Bird confirms that Bristol is in possession of a quagga skeleton.
Corbet evidently reported this finding to his fellow academic researcher at the British Museum (Natural History). Dr Gentry then contacted Bird due to the existing record of all known quagga specimens by Professor Ridgeway (1909), which made no mention of the Bristol specimen and enquiring about the skeleton’s history.
Gentry also commented that they had just been visited by Dr Rau, the founder of the Quagga Project. Rau was looking into revising Ridgeway’s account (this account was later published in Annals of the South African Museum). Rau wrote to Bird corroborating Gentry’s words and enquiring about the Bristol specimen. Bird replies to them both that the skeleton he thought Bristol had was actually only a skull (Registration Number: Aa 3294). The museum registry reveals the locality of this skull was the ‘Cape Colony’ (today called Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, and Western Cape, with smaller parts in North West province) of South Africa.
The skull was in good condition, and he wrote a short description in his letter. The good condition of the skull is surprising due to many other bone specimens, such as an Indian elephant specimen (object number Ab1998), still retaining a lot of dust from the debris left behind by the bombing of the old museum in 1940. From this description, Rau surmised the skull was from a male due to the presence of canines. Mention of the skull then goes silent.
This was until 1974 when Gentry once again writes to Bird. He said that he had been asked to confirm the species identity of a University College London quagga skull that he is comparing to an already confirmed skull in the British Museum (Natural History). A visit to Bristol Museum is arranged so that Gentry can also examine the Bristol skull. He subsequently writes his findings in a letter to Bird. Then in 1975, he published a more detailed account of his opinion on the Bristol skull at the end of a paper on the University College London quagga skull.
Calculating and comparing the morphological proportions of the skulls reveals good news and bad news. The good news is that the University College London skull is confirmed to be that of a quagga. The bad news? Gentry does not believe the Bristol skull to be a quagga. As the purpose of his paper was not to confirm the Bristol skull’s identity, he did not take this investigation any further. He expressed his uncertainty about the skull’s identification but did propose the domestic horse, Equus caballus, as an alternative (note horses and ponies are taxonomically the same). The Shetland pony and Dartmoor pony were his primary suggestions after comparisons with skulls from those two breeds from the British Museum (Natural History) collections. One example given was the similarity of the small canines of the Shetland pony specimen (Accession Number: 1952.4.1.3).
In his paper, Gentry (1975) highlighted five differences between the skull and zebras. He then identified an additional five between the Bristol skull and the two other confirmed quagga skulls. Although, he did note the first two differences found between the Bristol skull and the other two quaggas were a lot more reliable. Those two differences are:
Bristol Museum doubted Gentry’s conclusion as the label associated with the skull revealed the specimen was donated by ‘?S.H. Swayne 28 June 1872’. In the 1970s Bristol Museum believed this to be the Swayne of Swayne’s Hartebeest (Alcelaphus buselaphus swaynei P. L. Sclater, 1892). Due to his hobby of hunting between 1884 and 1897, Swayne extensively recorded the wildlife of Africa. He contributed to publications such as ‘Great and Small Game of Africa’ by Henry Bryden, even later publishing two books on his trips in Somaliland.
But as Gentry pointed out in his letter, Swayne of Swayne’s Hartebeest is Henry George Carlos Swayne who took 17 trips to Somaliland between 1885 to 1893 and wrote about it in 1895. So, neither the initials (H.G.C.) nor the date when this skull was donated match up with this naturalist.
Gentry is an Old World hoofed mammal (Artiodactyl) specialist, an order which does not contain the equids. This might likely explain why he contacts Dr Eisenmann, an African quaternary equid specialist, from the Institut de Paléontologie, Paris. Eisenmann writes to Bird and arranges to see the skull between the 4 and 17 March 1974 on Gentry’s advice. A later letter, on 1 July 1974, from Bird to Rau confirms a visit occurred and says no more than “Her opinion, also, was that it is Equus caballus” of the Bristol skull. No further records have been unearthed detailing Dr Eisenmann’s opinion and the evidence for this so far.
Again, years go by and the identity of the skull is dropped. That is until 1997, when Dr Barnaby, a close friend of Rau and writer of ‘Quaggas and Other Zebras’, writes to the senior curator at Bristol Museum, Mr Barnett. They had been communicating about another specimen in Bristol’s collection — Burchell’s zebra taxidermied skin (Aa790), which can currently be seen in the World Wildlife gallery.
For interest, it is unclear whether this subspecies, Burchell’s zebra, is extinct. There is much debate in the scientific community on what a ‘true’ Burchell’s zebra looks like, and so some consider the species extinct, while others such as the Quagga Project do not. In fact, the Quagga Project are using what they believe to be Burchell’s zebras for selective breeding to restore quaggas.
In his letter, Barnaby references the last conversation he had with Rau, where Rau advises Barnaby to contact Barnett about the Bristol skull. Rau suggested the skull be looked at again in relation to belonging to this Burchell’s zebra specimen. Rau recommended Eisenmann to review the skull in light of this theory, but no records exist indicating this ever occurred. Barnaby also asks Rau why Aa790 was designated as a Burchell’s zebra when it bears a lot of similarity to a Natural History Museum at Tring specimen, which was assigned the quagga name. Rau highlighted the irregularity of the stripes on the Tring specimen and that the stripes stop further up the body compared to the Bristol specimen, which has more normal stripes. In one paper of Ridgeway’s (1909), he stated:
“I cannot detect one single important character in which this Quagga [Tring] differs, for example, from the specimen of Burchell’s Quagga in the Bristol Museum”.
Rau did go on to comment that hopefully, DNA analysis might clear up this matter. In fact, in 2001, the Bristol skull almost had its DNA analysed but for whatever reason, this did not go ahead.
Female quagga (Accession Number: 394830) from the Natural History Museum at Tring. Image taken by Tim May, 28 March 2017.
Male Burchell’s zebra (Aa790) at Bristol Museum.
This theory, that the Bristol skull may be the same animal as the mounted skin, actually has some traction. In the re-registry of Aa790 in 1941, after the museum’s bombing, the taxidermied zebra was recorded as ‘old collection — no history’. But more tellingly, another’s handwriting notes ‘Mr Lyons 1825–1826 D’ (D for donation) with a locality of South Africa. Aa790 is unstriped on its legs and hind, which is consistent with Burchell’s zebra but also the quagga. A very old, but undated, manuscript entitled ‘Catalogue A Mammalia’ references an ‘Equus quagga, the Cougga, male, Africa, L. Lyons Esq.’ with a skull and skin listed underneath. If you recall the supposed Bristol quagga skull is male, as is Aa790.
After a search of all the equid skulls in the collections, no skull has the name L. Lyons attached. The letter correspondence of Barnaby and Barnett in 1996, reveals a search for the skull from Lyons, which also yielded no results. So, either Lyons’ skull was destroyed, is missing, or maybe it’s Bristol’s supposed quagga skull with Aa790 as its associated skin. Or as the original donation books shows a S. H. Swayne donated one skull Quagga on 28 June 1872. Perhaps both skulls were destroyed in the Second World War bombing of the museum, and an assumption made that Aa 3294 was that of the skull S. H. Swayne donated.
Interestingly, as an aside, letter communications between Barnaby and Barnett also reveal Aa790 was likely remounted due to an alteration in the posturing of the head. The taxidermy of Aa790 reflects that of the work done by taxidermist Rowland Ward. But now the mount is faded and split in two places.
One question that will arise if the skull and mounted specimen turn out to be the same specimen is — are they Burchell’s zebra or a quagga? Barnett did highlight an early confusion over the distinction between Burchell’s zebra and the quagga, which is no surprise considering the confusing taxonomy of zebras as a whole. There is a suggestion that they would be Burchell’s zebra. It is entirely possible that the original quagga skull was destroyed in the bombing and the current Bristol skull may have been mislabelled.
Fast forward to now and a team from Cardiff University are attempting to extract DNA from a tooth from the Bristol equid skull. We’re hoping to finally settle the matter of the skull’s identity.
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