Differential preservation does not completely destroy
ribs and vertebra while leaving all other bones in
tact.  All bones would show some degree of
destruction, some more than others.  The time period
suggested by Maureen is generally too recent for
differential preservation due to natural decomposition
to be an issue for a mammal.

Also, much carnivore and scavenger activity is aimed
at the internal organs of prey, not the long bones.
Carnivore gnawing would not necessarily need to be
evident on long bones to confirm this as a carnivore
kill.

-April

__________________
April M. Beisaw, RPA
Zooarchaeology and Taphonomy Consulting
[log in to unmask]
http://www.taphonomy.com
__________________

--- geoff carver <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> couldn't be a case of differential preservation?
>
> basedowm schrieb:
> > I had a paleozoologist specializing in wild
> mammalia look this over (in
> > consultation with an environmental zoologist) -
> and she looked for evidence
> > of carnivore activity and didn't find any. She had
> several arguments against
> > this which I can ask her to write up and post
> either here or on the excavation
> > website. The feet may have been disarticulated (as
> a result of skinning) --
> > the bones were so small they had to be fine-sieved
> out of the fill. We could
> > only be sure that the skull/jaw was articulated --
> for the long bones it was a
> > reasonable assumption given their deposition.
> Smaller elements were
> > distributed throughout the fill.
> >
> > I thought of this one too - that it was a buried
> pet that had been devored by
> > a dog or something similar, having come across
> similar, though not identical
> > (I've never seen all of the torso gone with no
> damage or disarray to the other
> > skeletal parts) remains in a non-archaeological
> context before.
> >
>
>
> geoff carver
> http://home.t-online.de/home/gcarver/
> [log in to unmask]


=====
---------------------------
April M. Beisaw, RPA
http://www.taphonomy.com
[log in to unmask]
---------------------------

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