This week I have a very distinctive skull for you to identify:
Because I expect some of you to work out what it is straight away, can you make your answer cryptic please, to give other people an opportunity to work it out.
I look forward seeing some cunning and clever hints at what this is!
Zygoma 
Yeah, takes longer to think of a cryptic clue than it did to work out what it is 🙂 But I imagine it would be good at devouring a whole constellation of tumours…
Nicely done!
Brings a cancerous lump to the throat…
Must suffer tooth strain a lot…
Holy Dentine Batman…
If it pursued the prey that its name suggests, it would move very strangely.
Lateral locomotion in one of these would indeed be strange!
A very distinctive skull! Not sure I’ve actually ever seen the skull of one of these before, but certain features are a dead giveaway.
You’ve watched Secrets of Bones haven’t you 😉
Here in Cromer we are famed for the prey of this creature, though it’s relatives round here are common or grey.
I’ve seen images of the teeth and the mandible but never the entire skull. Looked up images of the whole fleshed critter and this one is a bit “snoutier” than others, as the skull suggests. I’m used to the round bowling-ball head & face bobbing about here, eyeing me in my kayak. Thanks for posting, Paolo!
Well, I seem to have come to the same conclusion as some of the cryptic repliers! The over-all look of the skull didn’t help me at all. (Would the weird joint in the zygomatic arch have helped if I was more familiar with skulls of members of its group?) And the teeth are strange enough that I had to catch myself and say “No, it’s much to fresh a skull to be a Triconodont!” But the weird little accessory curlicues on the molars were the give-away: I’ve never seen anything like them except on this.
Thanks– quite apart from the puzzle aspect, this was an image well worth a prolonged and careful look!
I’m late to the party on this one – as everyone else said – those teeth are a real, and beautiful, give away. What a superb diet it has!
Hmmm… After looking t the Skulls Unlimited Website
http://www.skullsunlimited.com/record_species.php?id=1456
I see that at least some other species of the same family have weirdly prominent junctures of the jugal and temporal components of the zygoma. Strange looking. In isolation it would make me think of a hinge joint of some sort, but given the over-all rigidity of mammalian skulls it can’t be a functional hinge. Can it?
No, it’s just poorly fused, presumably because the masseter muscles that attach to the zygomatic arch aren’t used that much in chewing for these animals…
It must be an artiodactyl of some sort…