In my experience, skeletal elements from museum collections get borrowed all the time. I've had loans from the Field Museum in Chicago, Cleveland Museum, and the natural history museum in London. I can't speak specifically about the smithsonian, but I'm sure they are no different.

Yes this is true! But unfortunately these bone "disks" have been missing for several decades and it is possible that even the colleagues who have them (if they are not lost at all) are not aware of the origin of these bones. It would be nice to find them since they could be a good source for other researches in the future.

Hi Katalin,

I’m the Curator of the osteological (mostly skulls) collection in Berlin. In my collection are also skulls with this “holes”. I also don’t know when it was made and from whom. And also it is not announced how much individual are concerned.

You wrote that the researcher came from Middle/Eastern Europe. Did you have the name? And are the results published? Perhaps it was in both collections the same researcher.

Greetings from Berlin Barbara

Dear Barbara, if you're missing these parts in the same size (mostly or always) from the right parietals approximately from the area of tuber parietale, it is highly likely that they have been collected for the same research! Unfortunately we don't know yet who and from where took away them and we are not aware of any publication related to the topic since probably it has been written on the language of the researcher that time. It would be really nice to find out whether these elements still exist somewhere?! We're working on it!