It's on my desk at work so I'll check it out with a vernier and post up with the other (more eloquent than I can put) information I have. It's certainly interesting reading I can tell you. Nothing short of tracking porn.
Skull for ID.
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Here's the low down on it.
"First off it is not a Lagomorph (rabbit or hare) or a rodent. The fragment is a cranium or brain case and I think it is likely to be from an adult mammal. Although the quality of the photos is reasonably good, thay are not quite good enough to help me reach a conclusion on this - or at least they don't show what I want to see. Also the look of the bone texture is mature rather than immature. The fragment is small and badly damaged, fairly eroded or chewed. I do not think it is a herbivorous animal such as sheep or deer, quite often these have a single parietal bone whereas this looks as if it has two, and also the shape of the tympanic bullae (the bulbous areas beneath the skull whch house the eardrum and earbones) seems wrong to me for a herbivore. This last feature also helps me think it may not be a fox and probably not a badger - in fact if the animal is indeed mature, it is definitely not a badger. To be honest, I think my best guess at this moment may be a small dog with quite a rounded cranium, perhaps such as a small spaniel or a toy dog, quite an old animal, very well scavenged and chewed bone fragments."
Measurements I took were 62mm wide and 83+mm long.
"First off it is not a Lagomorph (rabbit or hare) or a rodent. The fragment is a cranium or brain case and I think it is likely to be from an adult mammal. Although the quality of the photos is reasonably good, thay are not quite good enough to help me reach a conclusion on this - or at least they don't show what I want to see. Also the look of the bone texture is mature rather than immature. The fragment is small and badly damaged, fairly eroded or chewed. I do not think it is a herbivorous animal such as sheep or deer, quite often these have a single parietal bone whereas this looks as if it has two, and also the shape of the tympanic bullae (the bulbous areas beneath the skull whch house the eardrum and earbones) seems wrong to me for a herbivore. This last feature also helps me think it may not be a fox and probably not a badger - in fact if the animal is indeed mature, it is definitely not a badger. To be honest, I think my best guess at this moment may be a small dog with quite a rounded cranium, perhaps such as a small spaniel or a toy dog, quite an old animal, very well scavenged and chewed bone fragments."
Measurements I took were 62mm wide and 83+mm long.
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That's bigger than I thought it was - were those straight line measurements or following the curve of the cranium? Mind you, that probably doesn't make a huge amount of difference.
Could be a small Russell, although the skull on mine is squarer in proportion. A friend has a tiny Jack Russell bitch, I'll ask him to measure her head. The Chinese style toy dogs tend to have very rounded heads, so it's not one of those. What other small/toy dogs have pointed faces?
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