This Friday I have a small and somewhat tricky object for you identify. Any idea what this is?
As usual you can put your suggestions, comments and questions below and I will do my best to answer.
Good luck!
Zygoma
Adventures in natural history collections
Zygoma 
B****m ? Or fish tooth ?
Ooh, very good! But a B****m from which species?
My nearest match so far for this useful little bone would be from a Mustelid
🙂
I want to make a “Venus in Furs” pun here…
Bacculum?!
Species?
Part of a hyoid bone?
I guess not. Ok, how about Mink?
It seems that you and Cam Weir had a convergence of thought on this – same species suggestion at the same time! But it’s not from a Mink
I’m saying baculum, mustela vison.
Not Mink, although you’re in the right ball park (if you’ll excuse the phrase in this context)
Well this is certainly a b*c*l*m, probably from a mustelid. M. erminea?
Haha, posted that off my phone eithout reading all the other comments. I’ll stick with M erminea.
M…… n……?
Interesting.. My second choice. I may be very wrong but suspect this bad boy’s a bit too well endowed for M. n……… .
M. e. hasn’t got the funky hook. I’m in for M. n.
A few years back while documenting a skeletal collection in a museum, I found a small plastic phial with about a dozen of these, all from weasels. The weird thing is, I never found the rest of the skeleton for them. So someone had just collected this specific bone (those who have ID’d it will know why this amuses me).
I had a good 10 minutes imagining the local weasel community developing some child-managing cautionary tale centred around the *****-snatcher, that would come get little boy weasels that misbehaved. Amused me anyway.
http://www.skullsunlimited.com/record_variant.php?id=4898
Not the right species, but FUNNY
Is it the bone out of an otters cock?