Determinants of blood water δ ¹⁸O variation in a population of experimental sheep: implications for paleoclimate reconstruction.

ABSTRACT: Mammalian body, blood and hard tissue oxygen isotope compositions (δ ¹⁸O values) reflect environmental water and food sources, climate, and physiological processes. For this reason, fossil and archaeological hard tissues, which originally formed in equilibrium with body chemistry, are a valuable record of past climate, landscape paleoecology, and animal physiology and behavior. However, the environmental and physiological determinants of blood oxygen isotope composition have not been determined experimentally from large herbivores. This class of fauna is abundant in Cenozoic terrestrial fossil assemblages, and the isotopic composition of large herbivore teeth has been central to a number of climate and ecological reconstructions. Furthermore, existing models predict blood

SUBMITTER: Green DR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6261537 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature