This week I’m sticking with small skulls. Rather different to the last one – any idea what it might have belonged to?
As always, you can click on the image for a larger sized version that may help. Speaking of help I will also do my best to answer any questions you may have – just put your comments below. Good luck!
Zygoma 
Hmm. Mammal. Big eyes. Lots of teeth- mostly pointy. I’m going to say its insectivorous. And tiny. Very tiny.
Is it a shrew? Or a marsupial version thereof?
It certainly eats insects and is of a shrewy disposition… although there are lots of species called ‘shrews’ that aren’t true shrews.
Hmm in that case possibly some sort of Elephant Shrew / Sengi. The teeth are wrong for a Tree Shrew, and its probably too big for “true shrews”.
I think maybe an elephant shrew.
A lot of other insectivore skulls have jaws where the back bit goes almost up to the middle of the eyes.
I thought it might be a bat to start with but it wasn’t.
It does look a bit fruit-batty – but you’re right, it isn’t a bat. In fact, you’re doing very well indeed yet again…
I’ve looked and I think there are 17 types, but I don’t know which one it is.
A tenrec, or something equally obscure… (guessing)
Funnily enough, I’ve done a tenrec before: https://paolov.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/friday-mystery-object-59-answer/
You’re right though, it is something fairly obscure!
Did you know this article isn’t on the front page of the website ? Maybe that’s why it’s so quiet.
It’s back now ! MAybe my web thingy was broken.
Thanks for letting me know – it’s a problem that seems to come up every so often. I’m not sure if it’s WordPress or a browser issue. It might just be that your web browser cache was full.
The long snout, small size, and insectivorous-looking teeth suggest to me that its most likely to be an elephant shrew (or “sengi”, to use the more modern name) of some kind.
I hadn’t noticed that Jake had got there before me, but there seem to be three of us now agreeing as to the group it belongs – you haven’t contradicted that, so I’m going to operate on the assumption we’re correct. So, which species?
That’s trickier – I can find images of four different species online, and this doesn’t seem to be any of them! Having said that, the closest match looks to be the short-snouted elephant shrew (Elephantulus brachyrhynchus). The incisors don’t look quite right for that, but I’m going to guess that I’ve hit the right genus, at least.
Re the technical issue. – I used the bookmark on my mobile phone (android) to come here yesterday. This post was listed, but I realised I hadn’t checked on the last answer so went there first. No matter what I did I could not get the newer one back up. I went out of the browser, I tried going into other apps and back … in the end I saw there was a comment listed and clicked that. So I don’t think it’s the cache being full as the database putting up the last thing selected. I’ve experienced that elsewhere. Major pain …