How do you know what animal a skull belongs to?

Well there are a number of different ways. Lets start with the most modern and recent methods. This would have to be the use of DNA strand testing, like in humans, the skull will probably have traces of the remantent animal still on it, by the comparison to a library of present DNA structures we can determine the Animal.
Now going back by a decade or two we come to the use a radio - Carbon dating. This method checks the percentage of carbon that has decayed previously.
The observation method is used with the method above, this is because even with the carbon dating we still don't know what the animal is. Therefore from looking at the skull an observer could determine some different features of the animal, e.g. the jaw structure, the teeth, the forehead, the eye socket, nose,etc. This can then be compared to present animals.

First answer by Fzaser. Last edit by Fzaser. Contributor trust: 7 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 6 [recommend question]