Characterising leopard as taphonomic agent through the use of micro-photogrammetric reconstruction of tooth marks and pit to score ratio

ABSTRACT

Leopards have been the focus of taphonomic research due to their capacity to create bone accumulations, prey on some hominin groups or potentially provide scavenging opportunities to early hominins. Some of the variables explored to characterise felids as taphonomic agents have presented problems of equifinality, such as the frequency of tooth marks on long bone shafts or the dimensions of tooth pits and scores. Recently, new methodologies based on microphotogrammetry and geometric morphometrics have been developed for the morphologic analysis of taphonomic marks, such as tooth marks. Through a review of Bob Brain’s neotaphonomic collection, the present study applies these new techniques to reconstruct leopard tooth marks and compare these with tooth marks from lions and spotted hyenas. Along with this, the ratio pit to score, a taphonomic variable previously characterised in lions and spotted hyenas, has been analysed. Results show that tooth marks inflicted by leopards, spotted hyenas and lions can be statistically differentiated based on their morphology. On the other hand, the ratio pit to score inflicted by the leopard is closer to hyenas.

KEYWORDS:

• Neotaphonomy
• carnivores
• early hominins
• geometric morphometrics
• landmarks

Acknowledgments

We thank The Ditsong Museum (Pretoria) and especially Dr Heidi Fourie for access to Bob Brain’s neotaphonomic collections. The support of the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Palaeosciences (CoE-Pal) towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at, are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the CoE. We also thank the authorities of the Parque de la Naturaleza de Cabarceno for their permit to conduct research and to Santiago Borragan (chief of the veterinary department) and the staff of the felid section for their assistance during our work. We finally thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions that improved the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Palaeosciences (CoE-Pal).