ASSESSMENT OF BIODIVERSITY IN PLEISTOCENE BRITAIN THROUGH COMPREHENSIVE SMALL-SCALE MICROSAMPLING OF VERTEBRATE FOSSIL REMAINS

近年来，自然生态系统被人类主导的生态系统所取代，对生物多样性的影响越来越大。为了更好地了解过去的生物多样性和气候变化等因素的影响，该项目旨在提供一种小规模的微采样技术，以彻底识别碎片化的脊椎动物遗骸，这种技术可以应用于所有未来的考古和古生物洞穴沉积物。该项目将重点关注一个具有重要考古意义的遗址，位于德比郡克雷斯韦尔峭壁的Pin Hole Cave，该遗址跨越了人类和动物活动约4万年。这是这个项目的理想地点，因为它最近（20世纪80年代）进行了高度详细的小规模挖掘，之前（20世纪20年代）进行了全面挖掘，现在被用作海洋同位素阶段（MIS） 3动物群的类型站点。20世纪80年代在Pin Hole洞穴进行的详细挖掘工作，在那里发现了大约18,500块骨头，将用于评估考古沉积物的岩心取样是否能产生相当于全面挖掘的信息，如果是这样，则评估获得这一信息所需的岩心样本的典型尺寸、数量和分布。这最终将提供一种小规模的微采样技术，可用于即将到来的遗址挖掘，以最小的遗址破坏来调查更新世英国的生物多样性。为了做到这一点，我建议对空间地图上的发现进行数字化，然后从最近在Pin Hole洞穴进行的小规模挖掘中，从50%的沉积物（约7,500-15,000块骨碎片）中识别所有形态上无法识别的骨碎片。采样将以这样一种方式进行，即调查越来越大的沉积物部分和每个部分所包含的物种信息。这些将直接与从早期全面挖掘中获得的物种信息进行比较，以评估全面分析的小规模挖掘的潜力。减少全面挖掘的需要将最大限度地减少对遗址的破坏，并为未来的研究更好地保存洞穴组合。直到最近引入质谱法对胶原蛋白等古老蛋白质进行测序，这样的项目才成为可能。在对针洞洞穴材料的分析之后，尽管这种物种特异性的生物分子可以从英国中更新世骨骼中常规提取，但将对来自英国各个遗址的精选标本进行分析，这些遗址的年龄从1万年到100万年之间，以确认所提出的技术在其他考古遗址中的应用。

Biodiversity in the recent past has been increasingly affected by the replacement of natural ecosystems with human-dominated ones. In order to better understand past biodiversity and the impact of factors such as climate change, this project aims to provide a small-scale microsampling technique for the thorough identification of fragmented vertebrate remains that could be applied to all future archaeological and palaeontological cave deposits. This project will focus on a single archaeologically-important site, Pin Hole Cave, Creswell Crags, Derbyshire spanning ~40,000 years of human and animal occupation. This is the ideal site for this project because it has had a recent (1980s) highly-detailed small-scale excavation and a previous (1920s) full-scale excavation and is now used as the type-site for Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3 fauna. The detailed 1980s excavations at Pin Hole Cave, where approximately 18,500 bone finds were spatially-mapped, will be used to assess whether core sampling of archaeological deposits can yield information equivalent to full-scale excavation and, if so, the typical size, number and distribution of core samples necessary to obtain this information. This will ultimately offer a small-scale microsampling technique that could be used on forthcoming site excavations to investigate the biodiversity of Pleistocene Britain with minimal site destruction. To do this I propose to digitise the spatially-mapped finds and then identify all morphologically-unidentifiable bone fragments from 50% of the deposits (~7,500-15,000 bone fragments) from the recent small-scale excavations at Pin Hole Cave. The sampling will be carried out in such a way as to investigate increasingly large sections of deposit and the species information that each section contains. These will be compared directly to the species information obtained from the earlier full-scale excavation to evaluate the potential of small-scale excavations that are comprehensively analysed. Reducing the need for full-scale excavation would minimise site destruction and allow for better preservation of cave assemblages for future research. Such a project has not been possible until the recent introduction of mass spectrometry to sequencing ancient proteins such as collagen. Following the analyses of the Pin Hole Cave material, although this species-specific biomolecule can be routinely extracted from British Middle Pleistocene bone analysis of selected specimens from various British sites from 10,000 to ~1,000,000 years in age will be carried out to confirm the application of the proposed techique to other archaeological sites.