Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Can anyone confirm that this is/isn't a green iguana skull/claws? Does anyone have a good pic of a skull/teeth from a green iguana? It's quite possible that the hair seen in the pics is from a different animal.

Thanks!

Mike Rochford

This website shows a iguana skull. Looks different to me.
http://www.skullsunlimited.com/graphics/tq-536-lg.jpg

green ig skull

>>This website shows a iguana skull. Looks different to me.
>>http://www.skullsunlimited.com/graphics/tq-536-lg.jpg
>>
>>green ig skull

It does not look like ig teeth or claws to me. Ig teeth have a different shape and the claws are darker. And what about the hair?

In fact, it looks like an incomplete lower jaw of a rodent. There are about 4 molars, a space, then a set of incisors. If this was from feces or a decomposing body, it would be likely that the end of the jaw holding the incisors would be broken off since it's long, pointed, and more fragile. In comparison, igs have serrated teeth all along the jaw. Even if teeth were missing, there are no sockets along the jaw bone.

The claws are disproportionate in size and definitely do not belong to the same animal.

That is the consensus between everyone I sent this to yesterday. I need to take it to the museum and compare it to specimens there. I've never seen claws like this or a skull like this in 300 samples so it's interesting that they appeared in the same sample. Back to the old drawing board...

Thanks again.

Mike

...opossum. It threw me off because it's a very incomplete piece of the skull. A lot of people I asked said it looked reptilian due to the homodont dentition and iguana seemed like one of the more likely candidates because of the size of the claws. The hair makes iguana seem obviously incorrect, but there are often more than 1 species of prey item in the gut contents. For those interested, it came from the guts of a Burmese python in Florida.

Thanks for the help!

Mike

Oh, you captured a feral burm and investigating the diet?

This one is from Big Cypress.

I was wondering if this is what you were up to, given your recent posts on the Burm forum. Are those possum claws, too? wow...nasty looking critter. I see them all the time but generally try to keep my distance (and keep my pets away, too).

Sorry to burst you bubble but that is not an opossums skull. the opossum as 50 teeth in its mouth the most of any land mammal. and the teeth are more jaged then strait. I looked at a few other skulls as a comparison and talked to a naturlist, but can only tell you that that is not an opossum. Sorry again

>>Sorry to burst you bubble but that is not an opossums skull. the opossum as 50 teeth in its mouth the most of any land mammal. and the teeth are more jaged then strait. I looked at a few other skulls as a comparison and talked to a naturlist, but can only tell you that that is not an opossum. Sorry again

You know, I still vote for rat, having seen quite a few of their jaw pieces. But I haven't seen other mammals/rodents to make a comparison.

I am leaning more towards the reptilian . The teeth dont look mammalian to me.

i'm not sure on the skull, but there is only one claw there, the other 2 are teeth of some sort. the last pic shows the 2 that are teeth. the claw looks like it may have come from some raptor, like a hawk, or maybe even a small bobcat, its hard to tell from the pic. how big was the burm you got these out of?

the skull is defiantly not a rat, rodents are all molars and incisors. could it be a juvenile Nile monitor?

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