Found part of a horse skull today!

Paint Me Proud

Paint Me Proud

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Whilst walking my dog I found the bottom jaw of a horse skull this morning. It is fascinating and I have bought it home to clean up so i can take it to work (we have pig, goat, sheep and human skulls at work but no horse!)

Does anyone know any good sites for ageing a horse via dental growth so i can estimate how old the horse was that the jaw is from.

Will be keeping my eye out for the rest of the skull now :)

It is just soaking in some bleach to fetch the colour up but i will post a photo later if anyone is curious :D
 
photos -

where i found it
skull.jpg


after a little clean up (going to use a chemical at work to whiten it)
skull2.jpg


It is from an area that the local equine dentist used to use over 10 years ago to decompose heads of dead horses so he could use the skulls for training purposes. This is obviously one that was forgotten about, and apparently the rest of the skull may still be there somewhere - i am off to look later!
 
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i have had a look at some websites and i think this is the skull from quite an elderly horse judging by the length an angle of the front teeth.
Really hope i can find the rest of the skull now!
 
Paint Me Proud said:
It is from an area that the local equine dentist used to use over 10 years ago to decompose heads of dead horses so he could use the skulls for training purposes. This is obviously one that was forgotten about, and apparently the rest of the skull may still be there somewhere - i am off to look later!
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LOL is that even legal? surely not just a pile of heads in the forest somewhere?
 
Horse skulls were considered powerful magic against evil spirits in Wales....there is a festival around this time of year called the Mari Lwyd which involves a horse's skull being dressed up and paraded...and most powerful of all was to have a horse skull built into a stone wall ;) - just to take this thread to a whole other place!!! :D
 
When we had our garage built, the builders dug up a whole horse skeleton!

We were a bit surprised it was buried so close to the house, which was a farmhouse, but it looked very old.
 
MrVelvet said:
LOL is that even legal? surely not just a pile of heads in the forest somewhere?
Click to expand...

it is on private land. I went back this afternoon to see if i could find anymore but wasnt sure where to look!

I was once offered a complete horses leg skeleton, complete with hoof, but i never got around to fetching it.
 
nikicb said:
That's what I was wondering. But at least it's not linked to the other post the OP posted this morning. :eek:
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lol - it was found next to their land and I must admit it did cross my mind that it had come from there but then i remembered about that the dentist and checked with a friend who confirmed the dentist did bury stuff in the ground there :D
 
My parents house was a late 1950s infil, built on the orchard/back garden of a lovely big Edwardian house (well it was when it was built, but certainly isn't now it's been extended (badly) and con verted to an hotel.

My Dad was a keen gardener and found a horse skull and a few bones in the back garden in the mid to late 60s. In the mid 70s we had an elderly lady knock on the door, and it turned out she had lived there as a child, her father was a dentist. There was a stable block/carriage house (had subsequently been converted to homes), where the horses were kept, and one day a horse had to be put down so it was taken to the orchard and shot and buried. Lady told us name of horse and everything, she had been quite fond of it.

http://horsehints.org/EquineTeeth.htm any help?
 
thats interesting :)

i used to help a lady with some horses quite a few years ago , she kept them on a small holding about an acre in size and over the years quite a few died (4 that i knew poss more) and were buried were they fell ,she also had goats and they were also buried over the years

she eventually lost the land and a housing estate was built on top of where it was ,i know most will have been dug up when they built the houses but i often wonder if anyone living there has had any shocks while gardening ;)
 
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