Hi, and thanks for the interest.

I've figured it out. It's a very incomplete skull from a Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginiana). The teeth on the skull are just the first few teeth from the top jaw of the animal and the bone is one that makes a ring around the base of the nose of the opossum. It was a very deceiving find but it makes sense because the hair in the sample keyed out to opossum and the claws certainly look like opossum claws. Bobcat claws are not as long and thin and they are more sharply curved. The claws are too large for any species of rat.

I'm not sure how large the snake was that ate it. When I get the gut contents they are pre-packaged by Skip Snow who performs the necropsies on the animals. He throws the carcass back into the Everglades. Eventually I'll have access to all the morphometric data but not yet.

Thanks!

Mike

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