Bone Accumulations and Conservation (Conservation Paleobiology)

Accumulations of bones are an under-appreciated resource for wildlife conservation and management. For paleontologists, understanding the formation and biases of death assemblages is vital for accurate paleoecological conclusions.  Comparisons between modern mammal communities and their death assemblages suggest that terrestrial ecosystems can produce ecologically-relevant bone records and that the quality of the data is of value to conservation biologists and wildlife managers.  Although historical perspectives are often missing from ecological studies of modern systems, they are important for understanding the dynamics of a community and how anthropogenic pressures have affected that community. Because bone accumulations are inherently “time-averaged” (composed of the remains of a number of past generations) they offer historical perspectives that may be of particular value to localities where monitoring efforts have been inconsistent or lacking. Particularly in light of global warming, and other anthropogenic threats to poorly studied systems such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Alaska) and the Canadian Arctic, it is imperative to gain historical perspectives with which to understand current populations and evaluate ecological perturbations