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A New Quantitative Method For The Taxonomic Identification Of Tetrapods, Stephanie Kuster

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

The rarity of good fossil samples throughout geologic time frequently makes fossil identification difficult. This dissertation presents a new, multivariate, statistically validated method to identify tetrapods based on quantification of the shapes of microstructural features in cortical bone of the postcranial skeleton. The ultimate goal is to reduce the reliance on rare, near-complete fossil skeletons. The method is validated on a set of 15,745 mammalian microstructural features from eleven diverse species. An additional set of 21,122 microstructural features from one species serve to examine microstructural variation within a single skeleton. Microstructural measurements were made on thin-sections using optical microscopy. Initial …