This week I have another specimen from the Grant Museum of Zoology for you to try your hand at identifying:
I have a feeling that it may be easy to get this identification to Family level, but species may prove a little bit more tricky.
I’d love to hear what you think it might be, so leave your suggestions in the comments box below. Have fun!
Zygoma 
The family is indeed easy (if I am correct). I don’t know if you want people to be criptic for this one, but better safe than sorry:
A long slender body with short legs and a medium long and a bit fat tail. They eat mostly fish. Most of them have a dark brownish fur and some have light patches.
Hmmmm… I’m angling in a Herpestid direction, but narrowing it down is proving tricky (as you said!). Indian Grey?
Marsh version of Rikki?
Name similar to a river in York that recently flooded to record levels?
I just wanted to come here and show off that I remembered some of these fancy sounding new terms you guys have taught me: auditory bullae (it has them), fourth premolar (yes it’s a proper Carnivora shaped carnassial), sagittal crest (which it seems not to have) and so on…
But I am now confused as I cannot tell whether it is the mu or the he side of the Carnivora.
Must do more thinks…..
(Returns to his tent and broods about the loss of Briseis.)
I’m with the rest at the ORDINAL level. The second upper molar means it’s not actually a CAT, and the snout doesn’t look long enough for a DOG, but there are about four Feloid families and two Arctoid that are still in the running for me…
A tough one indeed. Almost complete orbit, fairly robust zygomatic arch, and the odd little apparent upswing of the last molar brings me to the coolest of mammals with the strangely reptilian sounding name. As for a genus?