Key to cranial and mandibular remains of non-flying small mammals from southern South America

•Reliable identification of small mammal remains is crucial for several disciplines.•We elaborated keys for identifying skulls of small mammal from South America.•Keys are complemented with 30 separate accounts for the identification of species. Reliable identification of small mammal bone remains is crucial for several disciplines, including archaeology, biogeography, ecology, paleontology, taxonomy, and taphonomy. However, this issue is usually a challenging task, often complicated by the fragmentary nature of bone accumulations and/or by the taphonomic processes involved in the genesis of some assemblages. In this work, we provide dichotomous artificial keys for crania and mandibles of non-flying small mammal (