Ray Bandar (1927-2017) was an artist, scientist, naturalist and an incredibly prolific collector of bones. His collection is in the process of moving to the California Academy of Sciences but Natalie managed to land us a private tour lead by his great nephew. 
The collection is truly awe-inspiring, and a testament to an extraordinary life lived following a very particular passion.
All of this was in the basement of Ray's unassuming-looking house in San Francisco - 6,000+ skulls collected over a period of more than 50 years.
Ray's obituary: sfgate.com/bayarea/articl… - what an inspiring life.
Ray also has a spectacular sense of humor. He won the "grossest deadthing" Halloween contest four years running - here are a couple of his entries
Skull collector words to live by
We tipped off a friend with connections to KPIX and they did a piece about Ray's bone collection on the local news! It's well worth a watch - a very nicely made piece of TV sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/video/category…
"The remainder of Bandar's collection will be moved, piece by piece, to the museum in Golden Gate Park to be digitized and catalogued in a database for researchers." sfgate.com/bayarea/articl…
