The skull seems to be the most common skeletal part found
decorating the Blue Jay Barrens landscape.
At least half of my bone finds are skulls. I suppose the head yields little of interest
to most predators and scavengers. Meat
laden bones from the rest of the animal are carried off and either chewed or
consumed. The tough bones of the skull
are also more resistant to decomposition, so they remain recognizable for a
longer period of time. This Raccoon
skull was hidden beneath the leaves before I brought it back into the light.
Dentition is important in the proper identification of the
skull. By counting the teeth, you can
narrow the range of possible species. The
upper jaw tooth count in this case is 20, which is normal for several genera in
this area. It’s easy to eliminate
smaller mammals like moles or shrews and you certainly wouldn’t mistake this
little skull for a bear. Those species that might have a similar size
are foxes and dogs. These are ruled out
because their cranial ridges begin at the eye sockets and travel back to merge
somewhere near the back part of the skull.
In Raccoons, the ridges quickly merge between the eye sockets and
continue back across the top of the skull as a single ridge.
The profile also tells you this isn’t a fox or a dog. With a little bit of imagination you can put
fur, ears and nose in place and make a good guess. It’s easier when all the teeth are in
place. I’ve had enough dogs growl at me
that I’ve gotten pretty good at recognizing that tooth grin. I would point out that the snout is shorter
than the normal dog, but there are so many specialized dog breeds that canine snout
lengths and shapes can vary considerably.
I left the skull on top of the leaves. It’ll be interesting to see how long it stays
in place.
I have to end with the image of an alien face emerging from
the toothless jaw. It would be
interesting to take a skull and see just how many faces I could find hidden
there.
I had the same reaction when I first saw it: it looks like it could be an alien face.
ReplyDeleteHi Lois. I'm glad there are other people who see these faces.
ReplyDeletemaybe a skunk? ( skulls are so wondrous! so are repeating patterns and fractals of nature! great post! )
ReplyDeleteHi Jesse. It's a Raccoon. Skunks have only 16 teeth in the upper jaw, while Raccoons have 20 as seen here.
ReplyDelete