ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mamm. Sci.
Sec. Evolution, Anatomy and the Paleosciences
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmamm.2025.1564287
This article is part of the Research TopicMegafauna Extinctions Reconsidered: Perspectives from around the GlobeView all articles
Collagen peptide markers for three extinct Australian megafauna species
Provisionally accepted
- 1Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behaviour, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal
- 2Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology, Jena, Thuringia, Germany
- 3Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Vienna, Austria
- 4Department of Archaeology and Natural History, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
- 5School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
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Recent advancements in biomolecular archaeology, such as stable isotope and ancient DNA research, have expanded our understanding of megafauna extinction processes and dynamics. The rise of palaeoproteomics, specifically Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS), has added yet another method to this toolkit, as it can be used to taxonomically identify megafauna remains amongst highly fragmented bone assemblages. However, taxonomic identifications with ZooMS are reliant on the availability of collagen peptide markers for the regional fauna of interest. In the absence of a global reference database, most studies to date have been restricted to Eurasian contexts. Here, we report ZooMS peptide markers for three extinct Australian megafauna species: Zygomaturus trilobus, Palorchestes azael, and Protemnodon mamkurra. We show that these taxa can be differentiated from extant Australian fauna with these peptide markers. This foundational work represents an important step in establishing ZooMS as a method that can be used to identify new megafauna specimens in Australia´s highly fragmented fossil record and ultimately help resolve fundamental questions related to human-fauna-environment interactions.
Keywords: Zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry, Palaeoproteomics, Diprotodontidae, Palorchestidae, Macropodidae, extinction, Late Quaternary
Received: 21 Jan 2025; Accepted: 04 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Peters, Oertle, Gillespie, Boivin and Douka. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Carli Peters, Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behaviour, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal
Katerina Douka, Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, Vienna, 1010, Vienna, Austria
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