Friday mystery object #455

At the Dead Zoo we get quite a lot of enquiries asking for identifications, and many of these requests are for teeth. Mammal teeth are usually quite distinctive – for instance, tooth morphology underpins a lot of small mammal palaeontology as teeth preserve well and can be identified to genus/species with reasonable accuracy. Additionally, they can often give a good indication of diet.

With that in mind, I took a photo of some teeth that I found in the collections, to see if you can work out which species they belong to:

For the mammal fans among you this is probably way too easy, so please try to keep your answers a little bit cryptic, just so that everyone has a chance to figure it out for themselves. Have fun!

6 thoughts on “Friday mystery object #455

  1. Adam Yates's avatar

    See how those molar lophs in side view get narrower toward the top – they taper. I think Spencer Fullerton might agree.

  2. Allen Hazen's avatar

    Was this a young individual? The tops of the lophs don’t seem as worn. down as in some illustrations of the dentition of these animals.

    Confirming people’s proposed identification: the procumbent lower incisors and the “dip: of the lower margin of the zygoma in the vicinity of the rear end of th tooth row both seem characteristic of these critters.

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