New Jewelry Piece, Croc Bone Bracelet

I found a dead Juvenile Crocodile in a dry river bed in the bush last year and brought it out to the house in Pemba. I had Joa remove all the bones and boil them for me. From these I chose a few of the back bones that make up the shape of the scales called scutes or bony scutes. Evey scale on a Croc has an almost identical in shape bone beneath it. These bones as far as I could tell weren't really attached to an exoskeleton but were held in place by a sinew type material. The Croc had evidently died from natural causes, possibly had been stranded during the dry season in a shallow pool in the river that had went dry. He looked as if he had died and had been mummified by the Subsaharan Sun, unusual that something with teeth hadn't found it and ate it.



The blue waxes are cast from a mold pulled from actual scale bones from the back of a small crocodile. Under each ridge like scale on their backs is a bone that the skin grows over and makes up the characteristic ridge like scales all along their body. I took a matching pair, one from the right and one from the left of the center line. The two you see that are already cast in Sterling will be belt buckles, and put together and slightly altered for fit will become bracelets. I should have a few ready for purchase in a few weeks. AP