Assessing paleoecological data retention among disparate field collection regimes: a case study at the mygatt-moore quarry (morrison formation)

ABSTRACT Field work protocols in the recovery of vertebrate fossils can vary between sites, and also within sites, due to differing researcher goals. Disparate researcher priorities can affect the resulting collections in terms of species richness, size distribution, specimen completeness, taphonomic condition, and aesthetic value. We examined paleoecological data, in the form of bone surface modifications (e.g., abrasion, feeding traces, etc.), from a single site worked by multiple collectors to determine the sensitivity of this type of data to collector bias. We examined 2,368 fossils from the Mygatt-Moore Quarry and divided them into two cohorts: 2016–2019 (bulk collection under a single collector) and pre-2016 (mixed collectors and priorities). Frequencies of modified bone surfaces were then calculated in each cohort among the recovered specimens. However, the specimens within the cohorts were of unequal size, completeness, and amount of preserved surface area, making inferences of modified bone surface frequencies difficult. To correct for unequal morphologies and preservation, we estimated the percentage of altered surface area among specimens by overlaying photos with a 4.0 cm2 digital grid to create a digital set of equal sized fragments. With such a large dataset, we took a random 10% subsample of specimens from each cohort for the grid study. We estimated the sample size needed to accurately reflect the frequency of bone surface modifications by specimen and surface area for each cohort. Results show the recovery of modified bone surfaces between the two cohorts was highly disparate, and potentially sensitive to the effects of collector bias when using specimen-level data. However, frequencies based on estimates of surface area were much more consistent and appeared to equalize data between cohorts and showed little influence of collector bias on data recovery. Thus, the traditional method of calculating frequencies using specimen-level data may create an illusion of bias that is removed when frequencies are calculated from estimated bone surface area. We posit that the digital fragmentation method is more informative when comparing paleoecological traces between datasets and should be applied to fossil assemblages going forward, especially when collection protocols between assemblages are significantly different or unknown.