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ABSTRACT
Stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotopic compositions of bone and dentine collagen extracted from museum specimens have been widely used to study the paleoecology of past populations. Due to possible systematic differences in stable isotope values between bone and dentine, dentine values need to be transformed into bone-collagen equivalent using a correction factor to allow comparisons between the two collagen sources. Here, we provide correction factors to transform dentine δ13C and δ15N values into bone-collagen equivalent for two toothed whales: narwhal and beluga. We sampled bone and dentine from the skulls of 11 narwhals and 26 belugas. In narwhals, dentine was sampled from tusk and embedded tooth; in belugas, dentine was sampled from tooth. δ13C and δ15N were measured, and intra-individual bone and dentine isotopic compositions were used to calculate correction factors for each species. We detected differences in δ13C and δ15N. In both narwhals and belugas, we found lower average δ13C and δ15N in bone compared with dentine. The correction factors provided by the study enable the combined analysis of stable isotope data from bone and dentine in these species.
Acknowledgements
We thank the Institutions that provided us with samples, and the fieldworkers and hunters collecting the samples. We thank Jeppe Møhl and Daniel K. Johansson for assisting with the sampling of the narwhal skulls at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Author contributions
Research idea and study design: ARI, PS, EDL; data acquisition: ARI, MK, EG, MPHJ, EDL; data generation: TW, JR, PS; data analysis/interpretation: ARI, TW, JR; manuscript drafting: ARI, EDL with input from all the co-authors.