Mysterious Skull Identification Please

[Carlie]

My mum found a weird skull in our back garden. For about a week she's been trying to describe it to me and I kept fobbing her off telling her it was probably a cat or a hedgehog. She kept going on about how it had weird teeth and a horn. I fobbed her off again and said it was probably a damaged nasal bone or something, so she dragged it in the house.

I've not a clue what it is. It does appear to have a horn-like growth protruding from god knows where as it's so decomposed / damaged that it's hard to know which end is which.

The teeth don't look like they were made for chewing, so I'm guessing reptile or fish. The jaw bone also isn't joined in the middle and doesn't look damaged, so again that may point towards reptile.

I'm no good with these kinds of things, so would like opinions from anybody who is well versed in the world of dead things.

Any clues?

[wohic]

could it be a baby Narwhal skull ?

[sam432]

holy moly. havnt a clue wat it is,

[RasperAndy]

DoDo,

[freekygeeky]

how very interesting, have you got a local museum (for example natural history.zooological..? we do in cambridge) send the pics and find out, very interesting!

[Carlie]

I was going to approach a museum. There are some very big ones in Manchester. Just didn't want to approach them with the left overs of somebody's saturday night dinner.

What animal would have pointy teeth on both sides of it's jaw?

The horn does appear to be firmly fused to the skull, but absolutely no idea what animal might have that characteristic.

It's only about 3" long.

[freekygeeky]

Originally Posted by Carlie

I was going to approach a museum. There are some very big ones in Manchester. Just didn't want to approach them with the left overs of somebody's saturday night dinner.

What animal would have pointy teeth on both sides of it's jaw?

The horn does appear to be firmly fused to the skull, but absolutely no idea what animal might have that characteristic.

It's only about 3" long.

it sbetter to ask and get told its a ''chiclken'' to not knowing an dit possibly being somethign coooooool.

what about a cham? actually they dont have teeth..

[Carlie]

I've sent the Manchester Museum an email with the pictures on.

I've no doubt it is a chicken or something. I'm just curious as it looks bizarre.

[HadesDragons]

My first thoughts were some sort of fish - the shape of the skull is "fish-like" and it looks like it's lacking a lot of tetrapod (things with 4 legs) features.

In this photo:

does the lower part (what I would say is the jaw) articulate (move) around what looks like a joint in the middle? If so, would the skull be facing to the right in this photo? It looks like the end of the lower jaw is missing (it should be over on the right hand side, below what looks like an eye socket). Fish can grow "teeth" on pretty much any part of their head, depending on the species and which areas genes are active in during development.

If so, then the "horn" could actually be support for a fin or some other structure, like you can see at the back of this skull. There's also an (untoothed) lower projection below the lower jaw, which could be similar to the one in your skull:



I can't say I'm an expert on fish skulls or on working out what things are based on photos so it'd only be a guess!! If not then my second guess would be unicorn

[stuart89]

Which way is it facing? One way it looks like a sheep skull with a unihorn and the other way it looks like a fish skull with a sail fin bone.