Work

Taphonomic characterisation of tooth marks of extinct Eurasian carnivores through geometric morphometrics

Year: 2022

Type: article

Abstract: Determining the cause and nature of the postmortem processes that living organisms experience is one \nof the main common issues faced by forensic experts, zooarchaeologists, palaeontologists, and other \nspecialists. Carnivores are among the most destructive agents that can interact with a corpse, since \ntheir feeding behaviour can lead to very extensive alterations, complicating the diagnostic \nidentification of which carnivore species was responsible for the death of an individual, a livestock \nunit, or the formation of a fossil assemblage. Even though some currently available techniques enable \nforensic experts to undertake a differential diagnosis of carnivore agency from corpse examination, \nthese are very difficult to apply when skeletal parts are all that remains. Nevertheless, a computational \ntaphonomic approach can help identify which carnivore could have generated the tooth marks present \non bone surfaces, and thus aid in the reconstruction of their forensic biography.

Source: 中国科学通报：英文版

DOI: 10.1016/j.scib.2022.07.017