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- Title
Favourable preservation of fossil dire wolf teeth in anaerobic/anhydrous petroleum seeps: hydrocarbon impregnation maintains apatite integrity without interfering with histological analysis.
- Authors
Sholts, Sabrina B.; Hlusko, Leslea J.; Carlson, Joshua P.; Wärmländer, Sebastian K. T. S.
- Abstract
Histological analysis of teeth can yield information on an organism's growth and development, facilitating investigations of diet, health, environment, and long-term responses to selective pressures. In the Americas, an extraordinary abundance of Late Pleistocene fossils has been preserved in seeps of natural petroleum. These fossil assemblies constitute a major source of information about biotic changes and adaptations at the end of the last glacial period, although the usefulness of the fossils for histological studies is unclear, due to the unknown taphonomic effects of long-term deposition in petroleum. To address this question, we here conducted histological and spectroscopic (XRD, FTIR, and SEM-EDS) analyses of teeth from a) ancient dire wolves (Canis dirus) from Rancholabrean age fossil deposits in petroleum seep (Rancho La Brea tar pits, California) and non-petroleum (Cutler Hammock sinkhole, Florida) environments, and b) modern gray wolves (Canis lupus) from North America. Compared with the modern sample, spectroscopic analysis revealed a high molecular integrity of the tooth apatite in the seep sample, while optical and electron microscopy images revealed excellent preservation of dental microstructure. The petroleum-induced discoloration was found not to interfere with the histological examination. In comparison, teeth from the non-seep sample showed severe degradation and compositional heterogeneity, arguably resulting from chemical interaction with exogenous substances. These results indicate that hydrocarbon impregnation counteracts chemical degradation of fossil teeth without interfering with histological analysis. Thus, petroleum seep assemblages appear to be almost ideal fossil resources for dental histology and studies of mammalian life history.
- Subjects
DIRE wolf; DENTAL anthropology; FOSSILS; PHYSICAL anthropology; MOUTH
- Publication
Bulletin of the International Association for Paleodontology, 2014, Vol 8, Issue 1, p60
- ISSN
1846-6273
- Publication type
Article