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Bird Bones & Hungry Beetles [poster] Open Access

Dermestid beetles (or hide beetles) are among the forensically useful insects that are drawn to human and animal remains. In natural conditions, they tend to show up when most of the decay has passed and the remaining soft tissues are dry. Museums and hobbyists like to use dermestids to clean flesh from skeletons. This aspect of my research investigates the characteristics of damage traces on bird skeletons cleaned by dermestid beetles at the Natural History Museum in Tring. Insects don't often eat bone (that we know of), so looking at instances where this happens can help us better understand decomposition as well as other environmental factors in settings where early humans lived. Though the preliminary dataset of specimen attributes is limited, traces patterns are distinct and consistent with fossil diagnostic attributes. In addition, traces in modern bone offer more nuanced details about feeding damage to bone structure than the existing fossil-based methodologies, such as the way dermestids delicately expose osseous layers and trabeculae.

Descriptions

Resource type

Image

Contributors

Creator: Seeley, Sarah E. ¹

¹ Durham University, UK

Funder

Research methods

Insect trace typology (ichnology)

Other description

Keyword

Archaeology--Posters
Dermestid
Osteophagy

Subject

Dermestidae
Osteoclasts

Location

Tring, England, United Kingdom

Language

English

Cited in

Identifier

ark:/32150/r19880vr03c
doi:10.15128/r19880vr03c

Rights

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY)

Publisher

Durham University

Date Created

File Details

Depositor

S.E. Seeley

Date Uploaded

17 July 2023, 16:07:30

Date Modified

18 July 2023, 15:07:28

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Audits have not yet been run on this file.

Characterization

File format: pdf (PDF/X)

Mime type: application/pdf

File size: 5542874

Last modified: 2023:07:17 17:24:40+01:00

Filename: Insect Traces Archaeology - DCAD Poster 22 May 2023-5_FINAL.pdf

Original checksum: 48788791512bf2eb8db056664b894447