Paleoecological and taphonomic implications of insect-damaged pleistocene vertebrate remains from Rancho La Brea, southern California.

ABSTRACT: The La Brea Tar Pits, the world's richest and most important Late Pleistocene fossil locality, offers unsurpassed insights into southern California's past environments. Recent studies at Rancho La Brea document that insects serve as sensitive and valuable paleoecological and taphonomic indicators. Of the thousands of fossil bird and mammal bones recovered from the Tar Pits, insect trace damage is thus far almost exclusively confined to the foot bones of large herbivores, especially bison, camel, and horse species. Our laboratory experiments with dermestid and tenebrionid beetles establish that the larvae of both consume bone, producing different characteristic feeding traces and providing the first documentation that tenebrionids consume bone. The presence of carcass-exploiting insects in

SUBMITTER: Holden AR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3700975 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature