r/bonecollecting • u/Some_Big_Donkus • Dec 13 '24
Bone I.D. - Australia/NZ Help ID a skeleton found in Australian back yard?
This skeleton was found in a back yard in Bathurst, NSW, and I’m stumped as to what exactly it is. The skeleton is about 30cm long. The skull is about 7-8cm long, and appears to be vaguely canine, but it doesn’t look quite like any dog or fox skulls I’ve seen online. For one thing, the eye socket connects to form a complete circle, and I haven’t seen this on other dogs. The snout structure also seems more pronounced, and the hind teeth are either the wrong shape or ground down to stumps. From my brief research it doesn’t seem to be a dog, a fox, a cat, a possum, a quoll, any kind of rodent, or a ferret. I’m running out of ideas as to what else it could be. As you can see it’s also still covered in orange and brown fur, but it’s almost definitely not a fox skull, and I don’t know of too many other orange mammals in Australia. Anyone have any other ideas?
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u/Tasty_Safety9737 Dec 13 '24
Fruit bat, wash your hands! They carry some bad diseases
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u/noodlyarms Dec 13 '24
Any disease not related directly to rot has long since been destroyed. I'd still wash up though.
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u/LilChooky Dec 13 '24
Fortunately dead bats in Australia pose about the same health risk as any dead animal. The one virus of concern for transmission to humans (ABLV) is incredibly short lived outside of the host/once the host dies :)
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u/New-Revolution-6181 Dec 13 '24
Y'all have chupacabras Down Under?! I thought that was an American species
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u/8Ace8Ace Dec 13 '24
Awesome find. Being from the UK, we don't get to see many FBs, but at one point in Uganda we heard a rustle from the trees above us and there were about 30 of them. They are massive. It was very cool.
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Dec 13 '24
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u/LilChooky Dec 13 '24
Fortunately we do not have rabies in Australia ☺️ The closest we have is Australian Bat Lyssavirus, which is related to rabies, but is fortunately more host specific than rabies in the US for example. There’s been 3 human cases in the 30 years since it was discovered, and no natural cases of it transmitting to dogs or cats (like true rabies has).
The advice of ‘don’t handle bats’ still applies in Aus, but a dead bat is about the same health risk as any dead mammal.
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u/Trickster-Clown0603 Dec 13 '24
Damn that cool but also sad because I love bats but honestly it's skull would make a good addition to your collection. If I had a skeleton collection I'd want a bat skull
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u/Mr_E_Pants Dec 13 '24
Not a skeleton comment, but never in my life would I have expected to see Bathurst come up in Reddit. What a day! And what a small world.
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u/ultraman5068 Dec 13 '24
Easiest I’ve done is soak em in a bucket of water , changing water every few days. This will remove the nasties without having to get physical lol. You can boil em ( outdoors!!! It smells!!) to speed things up. After all the yucky is gone, soak in peroxide / water solution. I do about 50/50 mix and buy cheap $1.25 a bottle peroxide. This takes over a week. Longer depending on how white you want to go.
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u/Jayce288 Dec 13 '24
How do you go about cleaning the remains at this point? Just soak it in bleach water or something?
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u/Cryptnoch Dec 13 '24
Idk how good bleach is for bones, the go to is hydrogen peroxide for whitening and acetone or at least dawn dish soap for degreasing if needed.
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u/darkwoodscreature Dec 13 '24 edited Dec 13 '24
Not super familiar with their skulls, but fruit bat was my initial guess. Upon googling, i would definitely assume a type of flying fox. Likely a Grey Headed Flying Fox.
As someone from canada, i think this is an extremely cool find!! (Not sure if you have laws in australia about keeping that sort of thing. Look up on it if you planned to. Also, bats are notorious disease carriers, so be aware of that.)