'The brede of good & strong Horsis': zooarchaeological evidence for size change in horses from early modern London

Almost 200 horse bone measurements from 38 sites excavated across the city of London, dating to the period AD 1220–1900 were analysed. Results identified three main phases of size change: a reduction in size in the mid 14th to 15th century, and size increases in the mid 15th to 16th century and the 17th century. The decline in size testifies to the disruption of horse breeding in the wake of the Black Death, whilst the increases reflect purposeful attempts to increase the size of horses in England through a combination of regulated breeding and the importation of new bloodlines

Dead or alive?: investigating long-distance transport of live fallow deer and their body parts in antiquity

The extent to which breeding populations of fallow deer were established in Roman Europe has been obscured by the possibility that the skeletal remains of the species, in particular Dama foot bones and antlers, were traded over long distances as objects in their own right. This paper sets out to refine our understanding of the evidence for the transportation of living and dead fallow deer in Iron Age and Roman Europe. To achieve this, museum archives containing purportedly early examples of Dama antler were searched, with available specimens sampled for carbon, nitrogen and strontium isotope analyses, and compared with data for archaeological fallow deer from across Europe. Importantly, the resulting isotope values can be interpreted in light of new modern baseline data for fallow deer presented here. Together these multi-isotope results for modern and archaeological fallow deer provide a more critical perspective on the transportation of fallow deer and their body parts in antiquity

Plant and vertebrate remains from archaeological sites in northern England Data reviews and future directions

Available from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:7760.225(4) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

Developmental palaeontology in synapsids: the fossil record of ontogeny in mammals and their closest relatives

The study of fossilized ontogenies in mammals is mostly restricted to postnatal and late stages of growth, but nevertheless can deliver great insights into life history and evolutionary mechanisms affecting all aspects of development. Fossils provide evidence of developmental plasticity determined by ecological factors, as when allometric relations are modified in species which invaded a new space with a very different selection regime. This is the case of dwarfing and gigantism evolution in islands. Skeletochronological studies are restricted to the examination of growth marks mostly in the cement and dentine of teeth and can provide absolute age estimates. These, together with dental replacement data considered in a phylogenetic context, provide life-history information such as maturation time and longevity. Palaeohistology and dental replacement data document the more or less gradual but also convergent evolution of mammalian growth features during early synapsid evolution. Adult phenotypes of extinct mammals can inform developmental processes by showing a combination of features or levels of integration unrecorded in living species. Some adult features such as vertebral number, easily recorded in fossils, provide indirect information about somitogenesis and hox-gene expression boundaries. Developmental palaeontology is relevant for the discourse of ecological developmental biology, an area of research where features of growth and variation are fundamental and accessible among fossil mammals