The last few weeks have been rather insect-centric mystery objects, but this week I felt a need for the comfort of something I really know – bones:
This skeleton is awesome, although probably a bit too easy for some of you, so cryptic or poetic suggestions are encouraged. Have fun!
Zygoma 
might this be a creature that lends its name to shifty characters?
Now how am I supposed to tell which of the two species this is?
As with all the close relatives of this animal, I guess a look at the inside of its mouth might be instructive, in a vain quest for a solid bony upper palate.
It could have used the normal name/prefix associated with its homeland for its own name, but no, it had to be distinctive and go that direction with a different root word. No wonder it is not a talpid – they would never allow that up and down movement it uses instead of their standard sideways swipes.
give a digger a purse!
https://polldaddy.com/js/rating/rating.jsPalfreyman– Do I understand you to say that is uses NOT the normal name/prefix associated with its homeland. Dig it!
Exactly!
https://polldaddy.com/js/rating/rating.jsThe skeleton is in bad shape, and there are places where I would like a clearer view: front feet, for example. Or an enlargement of the skull. Still, over all shape suggests a way of life… that has ben adopted independently by three VERY distantly related groups of mammals, all of which have confusingly have the same four-letter word in their common names. From the profile of the skull (particularly the snout), I’d say it is NOT from the Northern Hemisphere group or the South African group which leaves… What Palfreyman(*) suggests.
Alas, the suggestion that this critter is a surviving relative of Necrolestes has come under severe criticism. Sob. Apparently the major clades of extant mammals are just the three we’re used to: it would have been so nice to have a fourth!
(*)And, given the colloquial use of “digger” as an ethnonym, Jennifermacaire.