Brown bear (Ursus arctos L.) palaeoecology and diet in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene of the NW of the Iberian Peninsula: A study on stable isotopes
Autor: | Aurora Grandal-d'Anglade, Ana C. Pinto-Llona, Ana García-Vázquez |
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Přispěvatelé: | Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España), Xunta de Galicia |
Rok vydání: | 2018 |
Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
010506 paleontology Cantabrian mountains Stable isotope analysis Pleistocene Cave bear 010603 evolutionary biology 01 natural sciences Cave Ursus Holocene 0105 earth and related environmental sciences Earth-Surface Processes Isotope analysis geography geography.geographical_feature_category biology Ecology Palaeoecology biology.organism_classification Diet Homo sapiens Brown bear Paleoecology Geology |
Zdroj: | Digital.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC instname |
Popis: | In this paper we performed stable isotope analysis on bone collagen of 81 samples from at least 39 brown bears (Ursus arctos) dating from Late Pleistocene to nowadays, that lived in the western of the Cantabrian Mountains. To interpret the data obtained we compared brown bear stable isotope signatures with those of cave bears (Ursus spelaeus), red deer (Cervus elaphus), and humans (Homo sapiens) from the same area. We observed that the diet of cave bears and brown bears in the Cantabrian Mountains was based on vegetable matter, although their different isotopic signatures suggest different ecological niches: wooded lowlands for the cave bear and steep highlands with scarce tree cover for the brown bear. In the Holocene brown bear maintains isotopic signatures similar to the Pleistocene ones in spite of the climatic tempering, which seems to be related to an even greater displacement toward the uplands due to a greater anthropic pressure in the ecosystem. Consolidating Grant from the Xunta de Galicia for emerging research groups (GPC2015/024) |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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