We were thinking beaver but don't they have orange teeth? Anyway looking forward to hearing your expertise.
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2025
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I need to do chores today, so I instead used my procrastination energy here! It's the molar of a herbivore. Here's what I have:
Definitely not beaver. Beaver incisors are orange and shaped very differently and it's far too large to be a beaver premolar or molar. Wrong morphology anyhow - beaver pre/molars are plicated and this is not. It's also not from a muskrat based on all the same criteria but the plication.
It's definitely from a bovid, not from a caprid or equid. Equids tend to have these bizarre columnar molars, and caprid molars are too small and the wrong shape. Since you're in Germany, that leaves us with cows and European bison.
It's the first or second molar from one of those based on the two cusps; if it had three cusps, it'd be the third molar. What clinches it is the asymmetrical gap in the roots (called a furcation area). Cows have a gap right in the middle of their first and second molars, whereas bison have an off-center gap in their first molar.
Congratulations, you have a bison M1!
This is golden age Reddit level content right here
I miss these
That little part of me thinks you were procrastinating so hard you researched, studied and learnt all that just to put off doing the dishes
Close! I went to college for microbiology, but we got a year-long crash course on general biology, including macroorganisms, plus we had a lot of ag students that I dragged kicking and screaming through their courses as a tutor. I probably spent twenty minutes or so on it because I have a really hazy recall of dentition details.
I haven't seen a post like that in four years! Thank you!
Wow thanks so much! That's more exciting than I anticipated actually 😄
Wow astonishing research, thank you!
Thanks! It was 10 times better than normal because I really didn't want to fight spiders while cleaning out the shed.
What's a bison molar doing in a creek in Germany?
Having a wild time interrailing?
Risky click of the day!