This week I have some news to accompany the mystery object.
After two years of hard work we have reopened the Dead Zoo. As part of that process, we came across this small piece of bone, which was caught in the historic furniture for several decades before jolting loose during some of the moves that have happened recently in the Museum:
A top tier challenge for a seasoned bone geek by the looks of it. So do you have any thoughts on what it might be from?
Oh, and in case you’re in Ireland (or have a VPN) you might be interested in this documentary that was aired on Monday, which follows the work I did on our whale specimens back in 2020. There’s a trailer for it here:
I hope you enjoy!
Zygoma 
A hip socket? Not human, presumably, but mammalian?
The sutures seem to me to be part of a skull. Because it looks to be thick, I am thinking the underside of a human skull. The one foremen could be the carotid canal. Maybe the jugular fossa? If there is another foremen, then that may be the auditory canal or external meatus.
higher on the food chain, this bone lies
the cranial suture, a squiggly line
the hole, a nerve once ran
the shape, the size… not a man
Yes, cranial, I’d say. Whose, though?
Looks like a mammal temporal bone. Which species I don’t know
knowing nothing of skulls, I’ll just have a wild guess – a sphenoid bone?