This Friday I have another mystery object for you from the Grant Museum of Zoology to try your hand at identifying:
It’s another distinctive one, but I’m guessing that it may not be familiar to everyone. So as usual, please keep your suggestions cryptic so everyone gets a chance to have a stab.
Have fun!
Zygoma 
Checking some of the fine anatomical details recently mentioned by Paolo should help narrow this down to the major group at least.
Those recurved canines should help, too.
With so many teeth I’d safely pocket a guess now.
This looks very similar to mystery object 93… but I think this one is great and has more of a bill.
the size is bothersome.. 2 options of the same Infraclass with ‘similar’ common names; a) ‘full-jawed’ mammalian omnivore with prehensile tale OR b) little carnivore, ‘not-pocketed’ with poor sight?
Thanks to FMO#267, I could narrow it down to group. If your skull is a male, I’d quickly name him Billy-boy. No idea what to call a female though…
After extensive study and Internet research I am pleased to announce my initial findings: it is not a tardigrade.
Having this narrowed it down, the rest should simple. You know my methods, Watson. Apply them.
Oh this made me chuckle on a groggy morning. Definitely narrows the field!
Given my inability to identify mammalian skulls more precisely than to an infraclass, I was about to remark on what appear to be three premolars and four molars in a post canine row, on the presence of five (? at least four, but I think there’s another one in the centre) incisors on each side, on the huge palatal vacuities… but it looks as Joe vans is ahead of mess to the implications! And, for greater precision… I’m tempted to follow Lena.
People wanting to figure it out for themselves should probably NOT look at this:
(But if you are a connoisseur of rotating-view skull imagery you might want to.)
I would like to nominate this for most cryptic clue ever. I had narrowed it down to a southern Indian animal whose Kannada name had been appropriated for the animal in question, but now I can only think of pianists’ fingers. And tardigrades, of course. I can always think of tardigrades…
I do hope my colleague Daniel Calleri ventures forth a comment. Those teeth, that gaping palate, and that didelphid-like braincase looks like a Baggins by a similar name.
Here here Jones…it’s just missing the hairy feet.
Some old coot up North keeps insisting these are his bones and I soo don’t think he’s wrong.
Ooops! The U-tube video I linked to… is not the one I thought I was linking to: I apparently don’t understand how URLs work.
Sorry. (I’ll wait until Paolo gives the answer, and then try to produce a correct link, since the video I thought Iwas linking to is cool.)
I thought the video you shared was more cryptic than entirely necessary!
O.k., apparently the way it works is that at the end of a video, U-tube automatically goes to another one… and when I tried to link I got the address for the following — unrelated? — video and not the one I had just watched.
This
— I hope — is less cryptic!
You can’t get much less cryptic than that!
(Aaaarrgh! I didn’t mean to SHOW it, just link! I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.)