This Friday I have a challenge for you. Can you work out which five different species these mandibles come from?
They are all different sizes and the lack of scale bars is deliberate – this is about trying to find useful features from the shape rather than the size, It’s not easy!
You can put your answers in the comments section below. Good luck!
Zygoma 
It’s going to be much more difficult to provide cryptic clue puns to all of these than to simply guess the species…
I don’t want to hog the comments and boar you all so I’ll be brief.
C is r.d, because of the notch on the bottom edge, and because it is quite thin. Might be another d, but not r.
D is p.
E is h.
A is from the greasiest greasemonster that ever greased. Might be s.
B looks like c. because the end curves up quite high compared to the rest. Almost an adult because pm3 about to be replaced by PM3 by the look of it.
C might be another d but not ro.
Sorry, C *is* ro !
You were right with the first one 😉
Full marks!
I suspect either A or B is the legendary Hungarian WW2 photographer, initial and surname, [anag]. Can’t decide which. The other is probably white and woolly. Alternatively they may be two different breeds of the same domesticated species. Or a wild one and a domestic one. This is actually the most difficult part of the challenge.
Jake’s guessed C, but I did wonder if it might be the one with the palmate antlers instead.
D is Winnie the Pooh’s friend, all grown up and probably gone wild.
E is that play by Peter Shaeffer about the psychiatrist and the troubled teen. Might it be a stripey one?
Distinguishing between A and B is where a scale bar would really help – there’s a very big difference in size…
Oh deer.
*** SPOILERS ***
Red, Fallow, Roe, Muntjac, Giant.
There’s only one deer in this bunch!
Seconds Jake on the answers, but would use incisor size as an alternative way of identify species between A and B.
Although considering that Horniman has a collection from all over the world, E might be h, z, d… – perhaps better just to say e***d?
Sensibly conservative on E!
Q*****?!? Wouldn’t put it past you 🙂
Oh deer, I must ruminate on these some more.