What is it?

I like a good mystery.  There is something fundamentally right about being to solve the unknown.  A mystery at Bark Lake, doesn’t require the likes of Jessica Fletcher, Columbo, or Sherlock Holmes.  No, most of our mysteries can be solved with a decent field guide, a bit of common sense, and experience.

Many of our great mysteries start off with two words:  What’s That?

Maybe it’s an unusual plant found behind the Balsam Centre.

Maybe it’s a foot print in the snow.

Maybe it’s the lower jaw of a… something.

The answers are often found by either carefully working through a key (such as the type found in Newcomb’s Wild Flowers) or a more cowboy-isk flip-through to find a nice picture.  Every so often, however, we get stumped.  This past January was one of those times.

During a class trip this January, a visiting teacher brought a photo he wanted some help with identifying.

Pretty interesting, eh?

This matching pair of jaw-bones was found near a school in the Guelph area measure approximately 6cm each.  No other bones were found nearby.

There was plenty of speculation and wild guesses, all which turned out to be w

rong.

Today I received an email from the teacher informing us that the bones belonged to a….

… you didn’t think I was going to tell you?  Where would be the fun in that?

Over the next week I will be posting hints on both the Bark Lake website and Facebook.  The first person to correctly identify the jaw before Friday will receive an amazing prize from Bark Lake.~Joe

UPDATE:

A special thanks to everyone who submitted an answer for the What Is It mystery.  I am very please to announce that one of our Facebook friends has correctly identified the jaws as belonging to a Black Carp.