Sprecher
Beschreibung
The identification of fossil taxa is the main goal of paleontology. Knowing the composition of communities is fundamental to characterizing past ecosystems and understanding changes in environment and climate. However, taxonomic identification of animal remains is not always straightforward due to the high degree of fragmentation that bones tend to present.
Recently, a technique of molecular biology (proteomics) has been developed for the identification of bone fragments, through the collagen peptide fingerprinting by mass spectrometry (ZooMS). This requires the collagen to be removed from the bones and that this collagen maintains a good degree of preservation. Breaking the collagen molecule between specific amino acids with tripsine, the obtained set of peptides can be identified by MALDI-TOF (Matrix-Assisted Laser desorption/ionization, time of flight). Some of them are characteristic of a certain taxon, and their presence or absence will allow us to differentiate the taxon from which they come, working as true markers.
In this work we applied those techniques to animal bones remains from the cave sites of el Hammar and Hattab II, both located in northern Morocco during End-Pleistocene and Holocene.