Search results for "Zinc isotope"
showing 6 items of 6 documents
Zinc isotopes in Late Pleistocene fossil teeth from a Southeast Asian cave setting preserve paleodietary information
2020
Significance Dietary habits, especially meat consumption, represent a key aspect in the behavior and evolution of fossil hominin species. Here, we explore zinc (Zn) isotope ratios in tooth enamel of fossil mammals. We show discrimination between different trophic levels and demonstrate that Zn isotopes could prove useful in paleodietary studies of fossil hominin, or other mammalian species, to assess their consumption of animal versus plant resources. We also demonstrate the high preservation potential of pristine diet-related Zn isotope ratios, even under tropical conditions with poor collagen preservation, such as the studied depositional context in Southeast Asia. However, assessing the …
Trophic ecology of a Late Pleistocene early modern human from tropical Southeast Asia inferred from zinc isotopes
2021
Tam Pà Ling, a cave site in northeastern Laos, has yielded the earliest skeletal evidence of Homo sapiens in mainland Southeast Asia. The reliance of Pleistocene humans in rainforest settings on plant or animal resources is still largely unstudied, mainly due to poor collagen preservation in fossils from tropical environments precluding stable nitrogen isotope analysis, the classical trophic level proxy. However, isotopic ratios of zinc (Zn) in bioapatite constitute a promising proxy to infer trophic and dietary information from fossil vertebrates, even under adverse tropical taphonomic conditions. Here, we analyzed the zinc isotope composition (66Zn/64Zn expressed as δ66Zn value) in the en…
Zinc isotope variations in archeological human teeth (Lapa do Santo, Brazil) reveal dietary transitions in childhood and no contamination from gloves
2020
International audience; Zinc (Zn) isotope ratios of dental enamel are a promising tracer for dietary reconstruction in archeology, but its use is still in its infancy. A recent study demonstrated a high risk of Zn contamination from nitrile, and latex gloves used during chemical sample preparation. Here we assess the potential impact of the use of such gloves during enamel sampling on the Zn isotope composition of teeth from a population of early Holocene hunter gatherers from Lapa do Santo, Lagoa Santa, Minas Gerais, Brazil. We first examined the amount of Zn and its isotopic composition released from the gloves used in this study by soaking them in weak nitric acid and water. We compared …
Geochemistry and isotope composition (Sr, Pb, δ66Zn) of Vulcano fumaroles (Aeolian Islands, Italy)
2018
We present and discuss temperatures, major and trace element gas geochemistry, radiogenic isotopes (Pb, Sr) and the first Zn isotope data of fumarole condensates and altered rocks from the Vulcano fumarolic field. The fumaroles of the La Fossa cone, sampled on 5th May 2015, have temperatures ranging between 233 and 427 °C. They plot compositionally on the mixing trend between the magmatic and hydrothermal end-members defined by previous studies, but are strongly displaced towards the hydrothermal component. Correlations of radiogenic (Sr, Pb) and stable isotopes of Zn with δ13CCO2 and several trace elements of the fumarolic acid condensates support mixing between the above mentioned distinc…
A Neandertal dietary conundrum: Insights provided by tooth enamel Zn isotopes from Gabasa, Spain
2022
The characterization of Neandertals’ diets has mostly relied on nitrogen isotope analyses of bone and tooth collagen. However, few nitrogen isotope data have been recovered from bones or teeth from Iberia due to poor collagen preservation at Paleolithic sites in the region. Zinc isotopes have been shown to be a reliable method for reconstructing trophic levels in the absence of organic matter preservation. Here, we present the results of zinc (Zn), strontium (Sr), carbon (C), and oxygen (O) isotope and trace element ratio analysis measured in dental enamel on a Pleistocene food web in Gabasa, Spain, to characterize the diet and ecology of a Middle Paleolithic Neandertal individual. Based on…
Trophic position of Otodus megalodon and great white sharks through time revealed by zinc isotopes
2022
AbstractDiet is a crucial trait of an animal’s lifestyle and ecology. The trophic level of an organism indicates its functional position within an ecosystem and holds significance for its ecology and evolution. Here, we demonstrate the use of zinc isotopes (δ66Zn) to geochemically assess the trophic level in diverse extant and extinct sharks, including the Neogene megatooth shark (Otodus megalodon) and the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias). We reveal that dietary δ66Zn signatures are preserved in fossil shark tooth enameloid over deep geologic time and are robust recorders of each species’ trophic level. We observe significant δ66Zn differences among the Otodus and Carcharodon popu…