For this week’s mystery object, I’ve decided to go back to skulls. Any idea what this one belongs to?
I’m sure several of you will recognise this, so please keep your suggestions cryptic, to keep the game fun for people who are less familiar with this kind of critter. Enjoy!
Zygoma 
‘I say Ratty, your huge South American cousin has come to visit and I must say, he looks even more at ease on the water than you do!’
Hmm, less at ease in the water methinks…
It comes from the GP’s family. But which one? Perhaps it comes to an anagram of “La age”
Niche suggestion, but nice. However, species in this genus have a narrower more V-shaped exit of the nasal passage in the palate than the mystery object.
‘Mind you, he’s no manners at all on the river, just hogs it all to himself!’
It’s certainly a hog of sorts.
solo 19?
would paolo be so kind as to pick a family with so few options to chose from?
water seems like the wrong habitat, how about the cousin named for its stony home?
Water is indeed the wrong habitat, but they’re not really associated with having a stony home either!
(My amateur status is about to be put on display…)
Obviously a rodent, but that leaves a wide range of choices: most species mammalian order, etc…
Lots of rodents have jaw muscles extending up onto the snout through huge infra-orbital openings, but it seems to me that this feature is most pronounced in the South American clade, so I’m happy with Chris’s reference to S.A.
Beyond that… The incisors are fairly narrow, and the molar crowns startlingly (for a rodent) simple: is it a fairly omnivorous kind? (The only South American rodent whose molar crowns I have a mental picture of is the Capybara, which goes to the other extreme: to use a Proboscidean analogy, this one has molars like, oh, Moeritherium, whereas the Capybara has molars that make Mammuthus’s look conventional!)
Good breakdown of features and narrowing down of options. Their diet is pretty boring – mainly grass, but they’ll be happy with some vegetables and maybe fruit.
A caped crusader with some harebrained ideas?
If you’re thinking someting along the lines of Pedetes capensis, then wrong continent!
cream of weeeeet
Nicely done 😉
Are the back of the incisors broken? Or . . . am I just haring on.
One does have a crack on the wear facet!