Species identification of archaeological marine mammals using collagen fingerprinting

Using ZooMS to identify fragmentary bone from the Late Middle/Early Upper Palaeolithic sequence of Les Cottés, France

“…Naming of peptide markers follows Kirby et al (2013). Peptide markers P1 and P2 are recent additions to the original scheme, and selected to separate Cetacea and Pinnipeds (Buckley et al, 2014). They are not taken into account here as their values remain unreported for several species present.…”

“…Spectra were compared with peptide marker series (A-G) for all available vertebrate species (Buckley et al, 2009(Buckley et al, , 2014Kirby et al, 2013). Marker series are similar for some closely related species.…”

“…The ZooMS blind test results are excluded from further comparisons as this faunal assemblage included samples also used in the morphologically identified assemblages. For general reference, a NISP count by archaeological unit including all studied bone specimens (either identified by morphology, unidentified by morphology but identified by ZooMS, and blind test samples with improved identifications by ZooMS) is provided in Supplementary Table 3. MALDI-TOF-MS taxonomic identification is currently based on 7 selected peptide markers (9 with the recent addition of P1 and P2; Buckley et al, 2014). The absence of a specific peptide marker in any given spectra has implications for the taxonomic level at which an identification will be made.…”

Combining histology, stable isotope analysis and ZooMS collagen fingerprinting to investigate the taphonomic history and dietary behaviour of extinct giant tortoises from the Mare aux Songes deposit on Mauritius

“…This is a significant result. Although collagen fingerprints have recently been shown to be species-specific in a few mammalian groups (e.g., camels (Rybczynski et al, 2013) and some whales (e.g., Balaenoptera, see Buckley et al, 2014)), this represents the first instance of species-specificity in non-mammalian vertebrates. This also allows investigation of variation in stable isotope values and dietary behaviour for the two tortoise species.…”

Balaenoptera edeni skull from the Holocene (Quaternary) of Osaka City, Japan

“…DNA analysis is a powerful tool to identify the species, but thinking about remains, collagen fingerprinting for fragmental materials (Buckley et al, 2014;Buckley et al, 2017) and osteological examination are helpful for identification. Here, we apply morphological examination with some measurements (see Table 3), because the specimen preserves diagnoses of the species.…”