Textural analysis to track the history of large herbivores

• Main Authors: Hofman-Kamińska, Emilia, Merceron, Gildas, Ramdarshan, Anusha, Berlioz, Emilie, Kowalczyk, Rafał
• Other Authors: Mammal Research Institute, Polska Akademia Nauk = Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN), Laboratoire de paléontologie, évolution, paléoécosystèmes, paléoprimatologie (PALEVOPRIM ), Université de Poitiers-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Poznan University of Technology, Poland
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2016
• Subjects: aurochs; dental microwear texture analysis; European bison; feeding patterns; moose; red deer; [SDU.STU.PG]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Paleontology; Alces alces
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-03908775; https://hal.science/hal-03908775/document; https://hal.science/hal-03908775/file/Hofman-Kaminska2016-5th%20ICSM.pdf

International audience Geographic and habitat distributions of large mammals most frequently do not reflect optimal conditions, but rather reflect the effects of restoration programs. An example is the European bison (Bison bonasus). This endangered species, which were extinct in the wild at the beginning of 20 th century, was reintroduced in Central and Eastern Europe mostly in forests – habitats, which were lately identified as non-optimal (Kerley et al. 2012, Bocherens et al. 2015). Our study aims to explore the dietary habits of bison and other large herbivores in Europe before the spread of agriculture during the Holocene, which considerably modified the landscapes.Dental microwear texture analysis (DMTA, Scott et al. 2006) provides information on feeding habits and allows for tracking variation in the diet of herbivores in changing environmental conditions. Therefore, this is an appropriate tool to evaluate how human management has influenced the ecology of wild herbivores (Merceron et al. 2014). We explored here the feeding patterns of the European bison and three other large herbivores: moose (Alces alces), red deer (Cervus elaphus) and extinct aurochs (Bos primigenius) originated from Neolithic Swiss settlements (6,000 - 5,000 years old), in the time before farming exerted significantly on the landscapes. Selected Swiss material was the oldest Holocene collection of preserved teeth with sufficient number of specimens from species with different feeding strategies. As a reference we used well studied modernspecies of ungulates from Białowieża Forest (Poland) characterized by known foraging patterns (Merceron et al. 2014). Forty-eight individuals of Mid-Holocene herbivores representing four different species: bison (N = 21), moose (N = 2), red deer (N = 11) and aurochs (N = 14) andthirty-six specimens of modern red deer (N = 15), bison (N = 15) and moose (N = 6) composed the data set for DMTA. The molds of shearing dental facets were made with a polyvinylsiloxane material (Regular Body Microsystem, ...