Rebecca's Post - June 15, 2010

As a new intern at the Human Developmental Anatomy Center, I have been asked to blog weekly about my experiences here. I am an undergraduate at NYU studying physical anthropology, but embryology is pretty new to me. I guess you’ll learn along with me through these blog entries (or at least see some cool pictures from my scanning adventures).

Well, it seems like I have been glued to this chair next to the scanner for a while now. I scan old crinkly acetate models from sun up to sun down (I hyperbolize as well). Usually, it’s not so bad because most of the stuff is really interesting and it’s incredible to handle original models from the 1920s.

Take this scan, for example; it was in a small box labeled only “Tadpole Ears, Streeter, 1920.” Tadpole ears?! At first I thought George Streeter had just pulled a fast one on me, mixing tadpole ears in with collections of human embryos and research on rhesus monkeys, but then I realized it did make sense after all to include tadpoles in a study on development. I continued to scan, appreciative of the great lengths to which scientists went so many years ago in order to understand human development.

As I continued to scan, however, my attention drifted elsewhere and I began to see angry clowns in every slide. This tadpole looks horrifyingly similar to the killer clown in the movie “It,” don’t you think?