What About The Bones? Research Paper Now Available.

[BigTreeWalker]

It needs to be determined that species or taxa identification can accuratly be done from teeth marks on scavenged bones. The conclusions to brights thesis indicates its not an accurate method. Is there a formal rebuttal to the conclusions within her thesis or recent published work indicating the conclusions are in error?

Yes it's been done. I even gave a reference in my rebuttals above. There are more. Don't trust me, do some homework. If we need someone to lay it all out for us, it's not going to happen.

[dmaker]

A reference dealing with tooth impact marks specifically?  Where?

 

"5. Tooth impact marks: When animal scavenge its possible for a single individual to leave a range of tooth impact marks dependent on the depth, pressure, and angle at which they are chewing. They specifically cite a public presentation Lisa gave during the beginning of her thesis research (Bright 2010), where she did talk about the potential ability to infer scavenger activity based on disarticulation sequence, scavenger behavior, and tried to look at tooth impression marks. However, her research concluded that it wasn’t possible to identify the scavenger to species, or potentially even taxa, based only on the tooth impact marks. She had remains that she watched bears scavenge, that did not match the typical tooth impact marks proposed by the literature. The final results are available in her thesis (2011 – articles forthcoming).

Rebuttal: She mentions disarticulation sequence as being important just as we believe it is in our research. But she doesn’t go into it here. In this case I need to discuss why Mr. Townsend decided to use her research as a reference. Unless it was her lack of dental forensic evidence with respect to bears and was used as a counterpoint in our discussion. Because we did find measurable evidence."

[BigTreeWalker]

What her research does tell me is that bears don't leave to many identifiable marks on bones. I can also say that cougars don't either when scavenging. Canids do because they break bone with their teeth. Unless a canine tooth makes an impression there is really not much to go on. That is probably what Bright's research shows. In that I agree. However, once one of those canines makes an impression, it can be measured and a determination made as to the identity of the predator.

Dmaker, look at rebuttal for #3. Really?

[dmaker]

"That is probably what Bright's research shows"

 

You haven't read her final results? 

Edited October 30, 2015 by dmaker

[ShadowBorn]

A reference dealing with tooth impact marks specifically?  Where?

 

"5. Tooth impact marks: When animal scavenge its possible for a single individual to leave a range of tooth impact marks dependent on the depth, pressure, and angle at which they are chewing. They specifically cite a public presentation Lisa gave during the beginning of her thesis research (Bright 2010), where she did talk about the potential ability to infer scavenger activity based on disarticulation sequence, scavenger behavior, and tried to look at tooth impression marks. However, her research concluded that it wasn’t possible to identify the scavenger to species, or potentially even taxa, based only on the tooth impact marks. She had remains that she watched bears scavenge, that did not match the typical tooth impact marks proposed by the literature. The final results are available in her thesis (2011 – articles forthcoming).

Rebuttal: She mentions disarticulation sequence as being important just as we believe it is in our research. But she doesn’t go into it here. In this case I need to discuss why Mr. Townsend decided to use her research as a reference. Unless it was her lack of dental forensic evidence with respect to bears and was used as a counterpoint in our discussion. Because we did find measurable evidence."

Dmaker

From what I read into what you have written : I would think that tooth marks could be used as finger prints on bones. Only if the tooth marks were to match with the actual animal that made them. But who knows maybe one can come close to the species with out having the actual animal present.  

[WSA]

To my way of thinking, the only way bits of bone are likely to be removed from any piece of a disarticulated skeleton is either by weathering, chemical action associated with decay/bacteria, or direct mechanical force. Am i overlooking anything? If not, and if you rule out the first two, you are then left with a menu of options, based on the context of the area of the find. The menu of options for Bigtreewalker includes a Bf. The menu of the scientist opposing this finding does not. By pronouncing Bf as an an "otherwordly" possibility at the start, she broadcasts her unfamiliarity with the entire hypothesis. I fail to see how her conclusions can be anything but what they are, really. Could they possibly matter? I wonder.

[Faenor]

It needs to be determined that species or taxa identification can accuratly be done from teeth marks on scavenged bones. The conclusions to brights thesis indicates its not an accurate method. Is there a formal rebuttal to the conclusions within her thesis or recent published work indicating the conclusions are in error?

Yes it's been done. I even gave a reference in my rebuttals above. There are more. Don't trust me, do some homework. If we need someone to lay it all out for us, it's not going to happen.

The Murmann refrence was done testing bite patterns on polystyrene not scavenged bones. You didn't provide any formal rebuttal or publication that nullifies the conclusions of brights thesis regarding species identification based on scavenged bone bite marks.

To my way of thinking, the only way bits of bone are likely to be removed from any piece of a disarticulated skeleton is either by weathering, chemical action associated with decay/bacteria, or direct mechanical force. Am i overlooking anything? If not, and if you rule out the first two, you are then left with a menu of options, based on the context of the area of the find. The menu of options for Bigtreewalker includes a Bf. The menu of the scientist opposing this finding does not. By pronouncing Bf as an an "otherwordly" possibility at the start, she broadcasts her unfamiliarity with the entire hypothesis. I fail to see how her conclusions can be anything but what they are, really. Could they possibly matter? I wonder.

Her conclusions were that species identification on scavenged bones was not accurate. Based on her research scavenged bones should not be used to identify any species or taxa.

[BigTreeWalker]

As Bright says in her post bears pretty much make a mess of things when they scavenge something. I have not read her doctoral thesis so I admit the only conclusions I know about are what were stated in her post. What was referenced in our research was a PowerPoint presentation about her research and what she was attempting to do. Which evidently for her didn't work out as well as others we referenced. The reason it was included is that we were discussing the possibility of predator/scavenger identification through Taphonomy, just as she was trying to do. You didn't like the reference I gave, there are others that reached different conclusions from Bright's.

After going through her PP presentation again I can see one big problem with how she was trying to use pits and punctures to identify which carnivores were doing the scavenging. She herself stated the drawbacks with using this method. A better method is using inter canine distance to identify which animals were responsible. I used this method to determine coyote and mink scavenging on EK#2. So contrary to her conclusions I know it can be done. She didn't have much to say about ribs because I got the idea from her PP that there wasn't much left to work with. So I guess, as we had already done, we can rule out bears and the mess they make of kills. Her study actually supports our conclusions that what she found isn't what we are looking at.

[Faenor]

Dude thats a little lazy just using the power point as a refrence without actually reading the source material.

Will you be writing a letter to the department that passed her thesis to inform them it is in error?

[WSA]

I hope this is not another episode in the exercise of zero-sum analysis....we have way too much of that in this field, I think. What we could stand instead is more collaboration between specialties. To me, it apears Bigtreewalker has taken the possibilities of the forensics to a higher level than some had previously. Rather than default to a "you can't do that" judgment, I would expect the thoughtful scientific practitioner to say instead, "Can you tell me more, please?"

[dmaker]

I have not read her doctoral thesis...

 

Yet, you know her conclusions are wrong?

[BigTreeWalker]

Faenor, instead of dissing everything I say take some time to look at the rest of our references. As I said the point of the reference was about the use of Taphonomy to determine bite characteristics. I really don't care whether her thesis was accepted or not. Not my concern. At least it shows another side of the issue.

[SWWASAS]

I hope this is not another episode in the exercise of zero-sum analysis....we have way too much of that in this field, I think. What we could stand instead is more collaboration between specialties. To me, it apears Bigtreewalker has taken the possibilities of the forensics to a higher level than some had previously. Rather than default to a "you can't do that" judgment, I would expect the thoughtful scientific practitioner to say instead, "Can you tell me more, please?"

Any scientist that says "you can't do that" is setting themselves up for being wrong. Most things like that are made to work by simply figuring out procedures and lab techniques that solve the problems and are made to work. I don't know what her thesis is about but I if it is directly related to the discussion here, I don't think she would want BTW present when she presents her thesis. As WSA says this bone study could very well add useful techniques and body to her own work. Perhaps that is what her interest is. Do the findings and techniques presented in the bone study contradict her own thesis? Is that why she needed to weigh in?

[Faenor]

Which refrence specefically demonstrates that tooth marks on scavenged bones can be used to accuratly identify a species? I looked through the some of the ones you bizarrly lump together to support your statements. The only one that i saw was the faust disertation which in a controlled test was able to predict at about 75% for carnivores. Most concerned a specefic group of animal, bear, coyote, chimp, etc.

Its laughably bad you use Bright to support the identification of scavenged bones since her work indicates otherwise.

Not to pile on but the footprint is awful. It barely looks like any sort of footprint let alone a sasquatch. But then you take these awful prints to extrapolate a height leading to the bizarre giant human figure the paper determines was the culprit. No ones going to publish this if you leave any of this in the paper, also the diary section at the beginning is not needed if you want to be taken seriously.

Also not to nitpick but it doesnt appear Hanglund & Sorg 2002 is actully listed in your refrences.

I hope this is not another episode in the exercise of zero-sum analysis....we have way too much of that in this field, I think. What we could stand instead is more collaboration between specialties. To me, it apears Bigtreewalker has taken the possibilities of the forensics to a higher level than some had previously. Rather than default to a "you can't do that" judgment, I would expect the thoughtful scientific practitioner to say instead, "Can you tell me more, please?"

Any scientist that says "you can't do that" is setting themselves up for being wrong. Most things like that are made to work by simply figuring out procedures and lab techniques that solve the problems and are made to work. I don't know what her thesis is about but I if it is directly related to the discussion here, I don't think she would want BTW present when she presents her thesis. As WSA says this bone study could very well add useful techniques and body to her own work. Perhaps that is what her interest is. Do the findings and techniques presented in the bone study contradict her own thesis? Is that why she needed to weigh in?

Her work was sited as support for some of the methodology used within the bigfoot bone paper. Her conclusions are that some of the methods used in the bigfoot bone paper are not accurate.

[SWWASAS]

From my viewpoint someone that states BF is a myth at the outset is hardly objective enough to evaluate the validity of methods which may support the existence of BF.