Search results for " behavior"
showing 10 items of 11374 documents
Typification of the name Abies nebrodensis (Pinaceae)
2017
Abies nebrodensis, endemic to the Madonie mountains (central-north Sicily), was originally described by Lojacono Pojero as A. pectinata var. nebrodensis and later raised to the rank of species. The species is considered to be critically endangered and was thought to be extinct until an extant population was rediscovered in 1957. The name is here lectotypified on a specimen preserved at NAP.
Dental wear at macro- and microscopic scale in rabbits fed diets of different abrasiveness: A pilot investigation
2020
To differentiate the effects of internal and external abrasives on tooth wear, we performed a controlled feeding experiment in rabbits fed diets of varying phytolith content as an internal abrasive and with addition of sand as an external abrasive. 13 rabbits were each fed one of the following four pelleted diets with different abrasive characteristics (no phytoliths: lucerne L; phytoliths: grass G; more phytoliths: grass and rice hulls GR; phytoliths plus external abrasives: grass, rice hulls and sand GRS) for two weeks. At the end the feeding period, three tooth wear proxies were applied to quantify wear on the cheek teeth at macroscopic and microscopic wear scales: CT scans were obtained…
Reappraisal of some species of the giant galericine Deinogalerix (Mammalia, Eulipotyphla, Erinaceomorpha, Erinaceidae) from the Miocene of south-east…
2019
A revision of the remains of Deinogalerix from the Terre Rosse of Gargano, stored at the Department of Earth Sciences of Florence, improved our knowledge of the genus. The goals of this study are to clear the taxonomic status of the specimens and to tackle several issues connected with the evolutionary relationships of the different species. The sample of dental remains of Deinogalerix freudenthali provides new information, which confirms that this species belongs to the most primitive members of the genus, alongside D. masinii. It is now clear that D. freudenthali is very close to the hypothetical ancestor of all other Gargano species, except D. masinii. Nonetheless, the oldest fissures of…
Symbolic use of marine shells and mineral pigments by Iberian Neandertals 115,000 years ago.
2018
U-Th dating of archaeological deposits of Cueva de los Aviones provides evidence for Neandertal symbolism 115,000 years ago.
Past millennium hydroclimate variability from Corsican pine tree‐ring chronologies
2021
A mitogenome sequence of an Equus hydruntinus specimen from Late Quaternary site of San Teodoro Cave (Sicily, Italy)
2020
Abstract Equus hydruntinus was a small equid that ranged from the Iberian Peninsula to Middle East. In Italy it has been considered present from the Middle Pleistocene to its extinction in the Middle-Late Holocene. E. hydruntinus shares plesiomorphic traits with other known Pleistocene equids. As a consequence, its classification has always been problematic. Genetic analyses on few fossil remains from Iran and Crimea have revealed that E. hydruntinus was more closely related to extant hemiones. To further investigate its systematic position, using target-enrichment capture and next-generation sequencing, we reconstructed a near complete mitogenome of a specimen from San Teodoro Cave from Si…
A 2500 year record of natural and anthropogenic soil erosion in South Greenland
2012
International audience; The environmental impact of the Norse landnám in Greenland has been studied extensively. But to date, no study has quantified the soil erosion that Norse agricultural practices are believed to have caused. To resolve this problem, a high resolution sedimentary record from Lake Igaliku in South Greenland is used to quantitatively reconstruct 2500 years of soil erosion driven by climate and historical land use. An accurate chronology allows for the estimation of detritic fluxes and their uncertainties. Land clearance and the introduction of grazing livestock by the Norse around 1010 AD caused an acceleration of soil erosion up to 8 mm/century in 1180 AD which is two-fo…
New palaeoecological approaches to interpret climatic fluctuations in Holocene sites of the Pampean region of Argentina
2021
The apparently regular and favourable climate that characterizes the Holocene as an interglacial period shows, however, important climatic instability well documented in the Northern Hemisphere. These fluctuations from colder to warmer or wetter to drier affected both biodiversity and human societies in the last 12,000 years, although the impact in Southern America is still poorly known. We are here investigating the biodiversity of small mammal faunas, more sensitive to climatic changes than large mammals, combining taphonomic and palaeoecological data in the Argentine Pampas to better understand the global nature and effect of these Holocene climatic fluctuations. This paper is pioneering…
Quantifying the evolution of animal dairy intake in humans using calcium isotopes
2021
International audience; The contribution of dairy products to modern human diets has a debated role in the expansion of Neolithic economies and the dynamics of demographic transitions. While current methods allow discussing dairy production and processing, no approach allows reconstructing quantitatively its effective consumption. Calcium isotopes (δ44/42Ca) potentially represent such a marker due to the abundance of isotopically fractionated Ca in dairy products. Here, we test Ca isotope sensitivity to dietary intake of dairy product: we first used a dietary model based on a compilation of available data of dietary Ca sources; we then compared the modelled outputs to available and newly ac…
A 1286‐year hydro‐climate reconstruction for the Balkan Peninsula
2018
We present a June-July drought reconstruction based on the standardized precipitation index (SPI) for the Balkan Peninsula over the period 730-2015 CE. The reconstruction is developed using a compo ...