Mystery MandibleCourtesy SMMIn an area called Kasota, a kid found a mysterious mandible in the riverbed. A mandible if you don't know is the lower jawbone of an animal. My friends and I all believed it to be a cow, elk, or a moose skull. After researching and comparing it to other skulls we found out that it was indeed a cow skull.

Cow Mandible with Mysterious MandibleCourtesy SMM

We went to the Science House in the Science Museum of Minnesota to compare our mandibles to the ones in their collection. When we compared it to the elk mandible, our mandible was the same length but it was obvious that bone between the teeth and the bottom of the mandible was narrower on the elk mandible. Our mandible was too big to be any deer mandible so we were certain it was not a deer mandible. When we were comparing it to the moose our mandible seemed a little too small to be a moose mandible. When we compared it to the cow mandible it was almost a perfect match. So we concluded that it was the mandible of a cow.