Coyote Skull: How to Identify One and What It Means

The West Texas A&M University species account and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum's skull guide describe the same skull. The rostrum, the snout part in front of the eyes, is long and narrow. Along the top runs a well-developed sagittal crest, a ridge of bone that anchors the jaw muscles. The zygomatic arches, the cheekbones, are medium-wide, the orbits face forward, and the carnassials, the big cheek teeth, are shaped for shearing meat.

The teeth follow the dental formula I 3/3, C 1/1, P 4/4, M 2/3. On each side of the upper jaw that means three incisors, one canine, four premolars and two molars. On each side of the lower jaw it is three incisors, one canine, four premolars and three molars. Add both sides together and you get 42.

For size, the San Diego Natural History Museum's canid skull comparison gives the useful range: usually longer than 160 millimeters, rarely over 200. Measure the greatest length, from the tip of the snout to the very back of the skull. Expect some spread, though. Size varies with region, sex and age, so a young coyote or a big one from another part of the country can sit at either end of that range.

A dog is often the hardest comparison, because dogs come in so many shapes. A paper in the University of California, Berkeley digital collections, *Distinctions Between the Skulls of Coyotes and Dogs*, lists the coyote's tendencies: a longer, narrower muzzle, thinner bones, sharper crests, longer and more complex teeth and a nearly straight lower tooth row. A dog skull of similar size is often heavier and broader, and it varies far more, because people have bred dogs into so many skull shapes.

Texas Tech University's account of the domestic dog gives a test you can do at the kitchen table. Turn the skull over and look at the palate, the bony roof of the mouth.

1. Measure the length of the upper tooth row.
2. Measure the width of the palate.
3. Divide the first number by the second.

If the tooth row is about 3.1 times the palate width, the skull is consistent with a coyote. Below 2.7 points to a dog. Anything in between deserves caution, and so does a clean-looking result, because coyotes and dogs can produce fertile hybrids, sometimes called coy-dogs, and a mixed animal can blur any test.

Coyotes are smaller than wolves, and the skull shows it. The San Diego Natural History Museum reports that both coyote and wolf skulls are longer than 160 millimeters, but coyote skulls are rarely over 200 while wolf skulls, *Canis lupus*, are usually over 225. One documented Oregon wolf skull in the museum's comparison measured 252 millimeters for a male and 227 for a female.

That gap is wide enough to settle most finds, but not all. An unusually large coyote, a small wolf, a young animal or a hybrid can land in the space between, so a skull close to 200 or 225 millimeters needs the teeth and proportions as well as the ruler.

Here a ruler goes a long way. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources Simplified Key to Furbearer Skulls sorts canid skulls by greatest length first. Over 200 millimeters is a coyote. Under 200, the key looks at the top of the skull, where two bony ridges run back from the eyes: ridges that meet in a V mean red fox, *Vulpes vulpes*, and ridges that form a U mean gray fox, *Urocyon cinereoargenteus*. The San Diego museum's comparison also covers the kit fox, *Vulpes velox*, and stresses that size, shape and teeth work together.

Maryland's key is a regional teaching tool, so treat a damaged, young or unusual skull with care. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife also compares coyotes, foxes and wolves, in a note dated August 10, 2023. For the fox side in full, including the V and U ridges, read how to identify a fox skull.

Lay the skull on a table in good light with a ruler, and wear gloves if it is not completely clean. Then work through the clues in order.

If the skull is much shorter and broader, with wide, crushing molars instead of blades, you are probably holding a raccoon, and the raccoon skull story covers that one. If it is far bigger than any coyote, the bear skull story may be the next place to look.

A coyote skull has no single meaning. What Coyote stands for depends on whose stories you are reading, and the clearest accounts come from particular nations and periods.

On the Great Plains, the University of Nebraska's Encyclopedia of the Great Plains names Coyote as a major trickster figure. It also names other tricksters who are distinct figures in their own nations, not Coyote under another name: Old Man among the Crow and Blackfoot, Iktomi among the Lakota and Veeho among the Cheyenne. The trickster, the encyclopedia explains, can be comic, selfish, deceptive, boundary-crossing, destructive or creative, and the stories often teach limits by showing the consequences when the trickster ignores them.

Among the Navajo, Coyote stories are part of oral tradition. The Heritage Language Resource Center describes Navajo Coyote stories as tales used to instruct children and guide conduct, traditionally told during the winter season, October through February, and asks that they be treated with cultural respect. Those stories belong to the people who tell them. For readers who want them from Navajo editors, the Smithsonian holds a copy of *Coyote Stories of the Navajo People*, edited by Robert Roessel Jr. and Dillon Platero and illustrated by George Mitchell.

In central Mexico, the Mexica knew Huehuecóyotl, whose name means "Old Coyote" or "Very Ancient Coyote." In a 1999 study published through UNAM, the scholar Guilhem Olivier describes Huehuecóyotl in sixteenth-century sources as a musician, dancer, warrior, fire thief and trickster, linked with the Otomí and with Tezcatlipoca. An article in the Mexican journal *Historia y Grafía* describes him as a pre-Hispanic deity associated with dance, music, sexuality and metamorphosis.

These are documented traditions, each tied to a people, a place and a time. They do not hand every coyote skull a spiritual meaning. A coyote skull tattoo or a skull on a ranch-house wall today carries whatever meaning its owner gives it, which is a modern, personal reading rather than an ancient one. For how skull imagery picks up meaning in ink, see skull tattoo meaning, and for the long view, skull symbolism.

Treat this as general information, not legal advice: coyote rules are set state by state and country by country, and they are updated.

Rules depend on the state, the land manager and how the animal came to be dead. Texas is one example. Texas Parks and Wildlife's nongame rules for September 1, 2026 through August 31, 2027 classify coyotes as nongame animals that may be taken on private property by lawful means, with a hunting license. The department's commercial nongame permit FAQs prohibit collecting nongame wildlife from public land, public water, public roads and rights-of-way for commercial purposes, and say coyotes may be taken and sold without a nongame permit when the hunting license and other rules are met.

A skull you pick up is not automatically covered by the rules for a legally harvested animal. Public parks, federal lands, tribal lands and private property can each have their own restrictions, and a clean skull is not automatically legal to sell or carry across state lines. Before you remove or keep one, work out who manages the land and confirm the rule with that land manager and the state wildlife agency. Our story on what to do when you find an animal skull covers the federal laws and other state examples, and how to clean an animal skull picks up once you know it is yours to handle. We do not deal in real skulls of any kind.

A few more points about coyote skulls.

If your skull turns out to be a fox, the fox skull story takes over, with the V and U ridges in detail. If it is short and broad, try the raccoon skull. And before any skull goes on a shelf, what to do when you find an animal skull is the page to read.

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