scholarly journals Are parturition scars truly signs of birth? The estimation of parity in a well‐documented modern sample

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lukas Waltenberger ◽  
Katharina Rebay‐Salisbury ◽  
Philipp Mitteroecker
Keyword(s):  
Modern Sample

Late Pleistocene Vegetation of Kings Canyon, Sierra Nevada, California

1983 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Cole
Keyword(s):  
Plant Community ◽  
Sierra Nevada ◽  
Late Pleistocene ◽  
Coniferous Forest ◽  
Pollen Grains ◽  
Mean Annual Precipitation ◽  
Juniperus Occidentalis ◽  
Sequoiadendron Giganteum ◽  
Western Side ◽  
Modern Sample

AbstractSeven packrat midden samples make possible a comparison between the modern and late Pleistocene vegetation in Kings Canyon on the western side of the southern Sierra Nevada. One modern sample contains macrofossils and pollen derived from the present-day oak-chaparral vegetation. Macrofossils from the six late Pleistocene samples record a mixed coniferous forest dominated by the xerophytic conifers Juniperus occidentalis, Pinus cf. ponderosa, and P. monophylla. The pollen spectra of these Pleistocene middens are dominated by Pinus sp., Taxodiaceae-Cupressaceae-Taxaceae (TCT), and Artemisia sp. Mesophytic conifers are represented by low macrofossil concentrations. Sequoiadendron giganteum is represented by a few pollen grains in the full glacial. Edaphic control and snow dispersal are the most likely causes of these mixed assemblages.The dominant macrofossils record a more xeric plant community than those that now occur on similar substrates at higher elevations or latitudes in the Sierra Nevada. These assemblages suggest that late Wisconsin climates were cold with mean annual precipitation not necessarily greater than modern values. This conclusion supports a model of low summer ablation allowing for the persistence of the glaciers at higher elevations during the late Wisconsin. The records in these middens also suggest that S. giganteum grew at lower elevations along the western side of the range and that P. monophylla was more widely distributed in cismontane California during the Pleistocene.

scholarly journals Comparing maternal genetic variation across two millennia reveals the demographic history of an ancient human population in southwest Turkey

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 150250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio Ottoni ◽  
Rita Rasteiro ◽  
Rinse Willet ◽  
Johan Claeys ◽  
Peter Talloen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Demographic History ◽  
Population Decline ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Human Occupation ◽  
Dna Variation ◽  
Genetic Discontinuity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City ◽  
Modern Sample

More than two decades of archaeological research at the site of Sagalassos, in southwest Turkey, resulted in the study of the former urban settlement in all its features. Originally settled in late Classical/early Hellenistic times, possibly from the later fifth century BCE onwards, the city of Sagalassos and its surrounding territory saw empires come and go. The Plague of Justinian in the sixth century CE, which is considered to have caused the death of up to a third of the population in Anatolia, and an earthquake in the seventh century CE, which is attested to have devastated many monuments in the city, may have severely affected the contemporary Sagalassos community. Human occupation continued, however, and Byzantine Sagalassos was eventually abandoned around 1200 CE. In order to investigate whether these historical events resulted in demographic changes across time, we compared the mitochondrial DNA variation of two population samples from Sagalassos (Roman and Middle Byzantine) and a modern sample from the nearby town of Ağlasun. Our analyses revealed no genetic discontinuity across two millennia in the region and Bayesian coalescence-based simulations indicated that a major population decline in the area coincided with the final abandonment of Sagalassos, rather than with the Plague of Justinian or the mentioned earthquake.

scholarly journals Uneven missing data skews phylogenomic relationships within the lories and lorikeets

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Tilston Smith ◽  
William M. Mauck ◽  
Brett Benz ◽  
Michael J. Andersen
Keyword(s):  
Missing Data ◽  
Outlier Analysis ◽  
Data Completeness ◽  
Outlier Loci ◽  
General Data ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Low Coverage ◽  
Dense Sampling ◽  
Modern Sample ◽  
Historical Samples

AbstractThe resolution of the Tree of Life has accelerated with advances in DNA sequencing technology. To achieve dense sampling, it is often necessary to obtain DNA from historical museum specimens to supplement modern genetic samples. However, DNA from historical material is generally degraded and fragmented, which presents various challenges. In this study, we evaluated how the coverage at variant sites and missing data among historical and modern sample types impacts phylogenomic inference. We explored these patterns in the brush-tongued parrots (lories and lorikeets) of Australasia by sampling ultraconserved elements in 105 taxa. Trees estimated with low coverage sites had several clades where historical or modern samples clustered together, which were not observed in trees with more stringent filtering. To assess if the aberrant relationships were affected by missing data, we performed a targeted outlier analysis of sites and loci and a more general data reduction approach where we excluded sites based on a percentage of data completeness. The outlier analyses showed that 6.6% of total sites were driving the topological differences among trees built with and without low coverage sites, and at these sites, historical samples had 7.5x more missing data than modern ones. An examination of subclades identified loci biased by missing data, and the exclusion of these loci shifted phylogenetic relationships. Predictive modeling found that outlier analysis scores were not correlated with summary statistics of locus alignments, indicating that outlier loci do not have characteristics differing from other loci. Excluding missing data by percentage completeness indicated that sites with 70% completeness were necessary to avoid spurious relationships, but more stringent conditions of data completeness produced less-resolved trees. After accounting for biased loci and understanding the stability of relationships, we inferred a more robust phylogenetic hypothesis for lories and lorikeets.

scholarly journals Modern sample size determination for unordered categorical data

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junheng Ma ◽  
Jiayang Sun ◽  
Joe Sedransk
Keyword(s):  
Sample Size ◽  
Categorical Data ◽  
Sample Size Determination ◽  
Size Determination ◽  
Modern Sample

scholarly journals The ecomorphology of southern African rodent incisors: Potential applications to the hominin fossil record

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver C.C. Paine ◽  
Jennifer N. Leichliter ◽  
Nico Avenant ◽  
Daryl Codron ◽  
Austin Lawrence ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Record ◽  
Function Analysis ◽  
Taxonomic Identification ◽  
Mammalian Fauna ◽  
Taxonomic Significance ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
Potential Applications ◽  
Taxonomic Methods ◽  
Modern Sample

AbstractThe taxonomic identification of mammalian fauna within fossil assemblages is a well-established component of paleoenvironmental reconstructions. However, many fragmentary specimens recovered from fossil sites are often disregarded as they can be difficult to identify with the precision required for taxonomic methods. For this reason, the large numbers of isolated rodent incisors that are often recovered from hominin fossil bearing sites have generally been seen as offering little interpretive value. Ecomorphological analysis, often referred to as a “taxon-free” method, can potentially circumvent this problem by focusing on the adaptive, rather than the taxonomic significance of rodent incisor morphology. Here, we determine if the morphology of the upper incisors of modern southern African rodents reflects dietary behavior using discriminant function analysis. Our model suggests that a strong ecomorphological signal exists in our modern sample and we apply these results to two samples of isolated incisors from the hominin fossil bearing sites, Sterkfontein and Swartkrans.

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