Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, District of Columbia, USA.
Department of Anthropology, Radford University, Radford, Virginia, USA.
Am J Phys Anthropol. 2020 May;172(1):140-147. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.24049. Epub 2020 Mar 14.
To describe and interpret previously unreported marks on the dry cranium of an adult chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) from Côte d'Ivoire at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (USNM 450071).
All marks on the cranium were documented and assessed through physical examination of the specimen, photography, micro-computed tomography (micro-CT), and 3D laser scanning. Pits and punctures were measured with digital calipers for comparison with published carnivore tooth mark measurements.
The cranium shows perimortem or postmortem damage to the temporal, occipital, and maxillary regions that is not recent. Size and color variation in the marks suggest two damage events, possibly involving chewing by different animals, at least one of which was a large-bodied mammal. The 22 tooth pits and punctures (0.89-8.75 mm in maximum length and 0.88-6.63 mm in breadth) overlap in size with those inflicted by wild leopards, the most significant predators of common chimpanzees due to their largely overlapping ecological distributions.
Based on qualitative and quantitative evidence, we conclude that leopards are the most likely cause of the most prominent marks on the cranium. However, we cannot rule out the additional possibility of other chimpanzees, although there are no published studies of chimpanzee tooth marks for direct comparison. This study is the most extensive documentation to date of a modern adult chimpanzee skull exhibiting tooth marks by a large mammal, thus providing new evidence to help identify and interpret other events of predation and scavenging of large-bodied apes in the modern and fossil records.
描述并解释来自科特迪瓦的一只成年黑猩猩（Pan troglodytes verus）颅骨上干燥颅骨上的先前未报告的痕迹。这些痕迹现收藏于史密森尼自然历史博物馆（USNM 450071）。
通过对标本进行体格检查、拍照、微计算机断层扫描（micro-CT）和 3D 激光扫描，记录并评估了颅骨上的所有痕迹。使用数字卡尺测量凹痕和穿孔，以便与已发表的食肉动物牙齿痕迹测量值进行比较。
颅骨显示颞骨、枕骨和上颌骨区域有生前或死后的损伤，但不是最近的。痕迹的大小和颜色变化表明有两起损伤事件，可能涉及不同动物的咀嚼，其中至少有一种是大型哺乳动物。22 个牙印和穿孔（最大长度为 0.89-8.75 毫米，宽度为 0.88-6.63 毫米）大小与野生豹的牙印重叠，野生豹是普通黑猩猩最重要的捕食者，因为它们的生态分布有很大的重叠。
基于定性和定量证据，我们得出结论，豹是造成颅骨上最明显痕迹的最可能原因。然而，我们不能排除其他黑猩猩的可能性，尽管没有关于黑猩猩牙齿痕迹的已发表研究可供直接比较。本研究是迄今为止对现代成年黑猩猩颅骨上有大型哺乳动物牙齿痕迹的最广泛的记录，为帮助识别和解释现代和化石记录中大型猿类的捕食和食腐事件提供了新的证据。
