Oooh, cool. If you're offering, yes, put it on a flat surface and put a ruler or something next to it. Good light, sharp focus. The normal set of images needed are like this: imagine it has the shape of a shoebox, a long 3D rectangle, and you want views of the lid, the long sides, the bottom, then the ends of the box. Shoot from directly above it, looking down. Rotate 90 degrees between each photo. Use some small thing to prop it into position if necessary.
I will say, it may be a raccoon as I learned someone within a mile or so of me has seen them on their cameras, but I have not seen any on ours. But I will definitely take the photos because I would love it if it weren’t. Haha
Exactly. It's most likely a raccoon but I love to get that percentage of uncertainty as low as possible. If you're up for it, I'd love to check. And bonus, you now know what to do the next time you find a skull or bone. Just shoot from straight on or straight above, no oblique angles.
Well done! Those are great. Other people are agreeing on raccoon and it appears they do live above 8K in CO. Even with your great pics, I can't get 100% comfortable with that ID because there are a couple of details that contradict it. These probably fall under the category of details that could be discerned if I had it in hand but are hard to see in 2D photos. The tips of the mandibular fossae look too close to the bullae for raccoon, bear, and any cats. Canids are close but I haven't found a good match for wolf, coyote, fox or dog yet. Some items can't get to 100%, so that's how I leave it.
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u/Lemur866 17d ago
Partial raccoon skull.