[Antoninus]

well, I'm not an osteologist, nor am I a veterinarian, but they all appear to be canines to me - not canidae, but canis familiaris. a trained veterinary osteologist would do a much better job of identification.

That's basically my point. We know these are canine skulls because we are familiar with them. Similarly, a verterinary osteologist would be able to place them immediately because he's seen thousands of them--along with their original owners.

We don't have that luxury with the fossil record which covers at least 4 billion years. Tales of incorrect interpretations of the fossils are legion and updated almost daily.

Don't assume that I think we shouldn't study the fossil record--quite the contrary I find it fasciniating and I read about each new discovery with great interest. However, I'm cautious enough to realize that something paleontologists are absolutely certain right now might get thrown out the window in 20 years. We're just scratching the surface, really.

[King Prout]

I'm reasonably comfortable with the analyses done by experts in the field. I'm not particularly pleased with the occasional uber-extrapolation from one chunk of occipital bone into a fully-fleshed organism, nay! tribe, etc... but those are exceptions to the rule.

while not an osteologist, I do have some familiarity with the standards of the trade, and know that they are carefully measuring and comparing hundreds of specific and interrelated "landmark" features, not simply eyeballing them and making grand pronouncements - that latter's the Scientific Creationist's method, not the scientist's.