Recent Advances in Ageing and Sexing Animal Bones by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Archaeology
ISBN: 2084654
Publisher: Oxbow Books, Limited
Published: 2015-06-29T16:00:00+00:00

Fig. 5. Known-age plotted against known-age minus the estimated age. Age was estimated using three equations: linear regression, quadratic regression, and the QCHM. Positive values are under-estimates and negative values are overestimates. The darkly shaded regions approximate ±9.6 months (one 10% of life span age class), while the lightly shaded regions approximate the adjacent 10% of life span age class.

Fig. 6. Histograms comparing the number of individuals in each age class using multiple methods of estimating age. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to see if the distributions created from the estimation techniques were similar to the known age distribution. The histograms of the linear and quadratic regressions were not significantly different from the known-age histogram, but the QCHM histogram was.

The regression equations appear to adequately estimate age from crown height in this sample of known-age Rocky Mountain elk. If age estimates were needed only for elk with the same sized teeth, then the regression equations are sufficient. However, faunal analysts need to assign ages in a variety of populations whose teeth and life histories may have different parameters. This is especially true for C. elaphus whose body and tooth size vary across space and through time. The regression equations are only suitable for populations with teeth the size of Rocky Mountain elk, one of the largest subspecies of elk (Geist 1998, 349–350). Enloe and Turner’s (in this volume) study of reindeer (R. tarandus) confirmed that initial unworn crown heights need to be population specific and therefore that general regression equations are not adequate for estimating age-at-death in species whose tooth size varies. Because of this variation, it is desirable to have a theoretical formula in which initial crown heights and other values can be sample specific.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.