Two Big Mystery Skulls

After coffee at Beans in the Belfry in Brunswick, MD, Carolyn and I stopped at Luckett’s a sort of antique junk store flea market in Virginia.

I prowled through the outside stuff, not expecting to find anything and, satisfied I was missing no treasure, I went inside and swept through the big room.  Before going upstairs, I tucked into a little alcove and there, under several old taxidermy deer heads, I saw a bad taxidermy mink resting among antlers and bones. Ignoring the antlers and two pelvis bones of something deer-sized, I peered at two enormous carnivore skulls. What were they?

The most obvious guess would be Pit Bull, but they were both far too big. I have a lot of skulls, including that of what I estimate was a 60-pound Pit Bull, and the smallest skull was three times that size. This skull was missing its mandible, but I thought it was probably a 200-pound black bear.  Price: $35.

I turned to the larger skull.  What was it? I googled “Sea Lion,” as the big skull and short face made me think of a California Sea Lion I had seen in a children’s museum in San Francisco, but it lacked the required sagittal crest.  I googled Grizzly Bear and Polar Bear, and decided it might be a Polar Bear. How much?  $65.

After paying for the two skulls, I took them outside and loaded their pictures up to Facebook. What were they?

The Black Bear was confirmed in short order, but my Polar Bear guess was shot down by a real bone expert in the UK. Lion, he said.  I assumed Mountain Lion, googled that, and said I thought he was right. “No,” he replied, “African Lion”.

Really?  I was skeptical, but by now I was home and I measured the two skulls. 

The Black Bear skull was 11” long, which meant it was not a young bear, but a big adult female, or at least an average adult male.  

The lion skull, even missing a bit off the front. was 13” — way too big for a North American Mountain Lion, but right on the money for an African Lion. 

I texted my next door neighbor who is an avid big game hunter with both North American Black Bear and African Lion trophies. He sent me a picture of his full African Lion skull and, based on it, I think my complete African Lion skull would have been 14” long, which is about average for an adult.