Skulls, Skeletons, Canines & Claws

[tigerluver]

@Panthera,

An interesting carnassial and great thoughts, thanks for sharing. The age does make the classification less certain. 

Dentition are really hard to classify because they are so variable, especially in the lateral view. Take a look at collage from Jiangzuo and Liu (2020).:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Also a diagram from Marciszak et al. (2014) to calibrate ourselves with the anatomy:

*This image is copyright of its original author

What catches my eye on the M. microta P4 is the shape of the protocone. Despite the massive variation in carnassial shape, in pantherines the posterior contour of the protocone is diagonal from the base to the apex. However, in M. microta the posterior contour starts of diagonal then sharply switches to be nearly straight. As I see it in the photos, your P4 seems to have the pantherine contour. However, if you are able to take a photo with the cusps positioned closer to midline we could check to see if the contour of the protocone appears different. 

*This image is copyright of its original author

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