Morphometry of Chinchilla Skull

The aim of this thesis is to perform craniometrical study on chinchillas’ skulls. The tasks of this work are – perform chinchillas’ skulls morphometrical studies; perform comparison between different age chinchillas’ skulls; perform comparison between different sex chinchillas’ skulls. For the study I used chinchillas’ skull provided from a chinchilla fur farm MB “Sedlita” that is located at Šlienava in Kaunas region. Altogether, I collected 14 skulls, they were divided into four groups, based on their sex and age – chinchilla males not older than 8 months 1 skull; chinchilla males older than 8 months 6 skulls; Chinchilla females not older than 8 months 1 skull; Chinchilla females older than 8 months 6 skulls. Morphometrical measurements were performed with a slider, measuring in millimeters, 0,01 mm accuracy, based on A Von Den Driesch (1976). 19 indexes of the cranium and 5 of the lower jaw were measured. The results were compared based on the broken down groups. While comparing differences between different age groups of chinchillas’ skulls and mandibula all but one index (14 – Greatest neurocranium breadth) were significant (p