School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia.
Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia.
Sci Rep. 2022 Oct 29;12(1):18245. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-21021-w.
Specimen identification is the backbone of archeozoological research. The challenge of differentiating postcranial skeletal elements of closely related wild animals in biodiverse regions can prove a barrier to understanding past human foraging behaviours. Morphometrics are increasingly being employed to classify paleozoological animal remains, however, the potential of these methods to discriminate between wild animal groups has yet to be fully realised. Here we demonstrate the applicability of a traditional morphometric approach to taxonomically classify foot and ankle bones of kangaroos, a large and highly diverse marsupial family. Using multiple discriminant analysis, we classify archaeological specimens from Boodie Cave, in northwest Australia and identify the presence of two locally extinct macropod species during the terminal Pleistocene. The appearance of the banded hare-wallaby and northern nail-tail wallaby in the Pilbara region at this time provides independent evidence of the ecological and human responses to a changing climate at the end of the last Ice Age. Traditional morphometrics provides an accessible, inexpensive, and non-destructive tool for paleozoological specimen classification and has substantial potential for applications to other diverse wild faunas.
标本鉴定是动物考古学研究的基础。在生物多样性丰富的地区，区分亲缘关系密切的野生动物的后体骨骼元素是一项挑战，这可能成为理解过去人类觅食行为的障碍。形态计量学越来越多地被用于对古动物遗骸进行分类，但这些方法区分野生动物群体的潜力尚未得到充分实现。在这里，我们展示了一种传统形态计量方法在分类袋鼠足部和踝骨方面的适用性，袋鼠是一个大型且高度多样化的有袋目家族。使用多元判别分析，我们对来自澳大利亚西北部的布迪洞穴的考古标本进行了分类，并在更新世末期确定了两种当地灭绝的有袋目物种的存在。此时，条纹兔袋鼠和北部钉尾袋鼠出现在皮尔巴拉地区，为气候变化对最后一个冰河时代末期生态和人类的影响提供了独立的证据。传统形态计量学为古动物标本分类提供了一种易于使用、成本低廉且非破坏性的工具，并且在应用于其他多样化的野生动物群方面具有很大的潜力。
