Taphonomic characterisation of tooth marks of extinct Eurasian carnivores through Geometric Morphometric

Abstract

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