Adviser: Dr. Blaire Van Valkenburgh

Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Innovative research project to spatially analyze Pleistocene carnivore hunting injuries using ArcGIS.

Using a skeleton image as a raster basemap, a skeleton polygon feature class was digitized and "georeferenced". Then based on real bone injuries found, an injury point feature class was digitized. Heat-maps of injuries were created and the number of injury points on each bone polygon was analyzed.

Tools:

• Esri ArcMap

Data:

• Direwolf bones from La Brea Tar Pits
• Direwolf Skeleton Image

Skills:

feature class creation, digitization, kernel density

Poster presentation at the 2015 UCLA Biology Symposium	New York Times article about the research	Nature Ecology & Evolution article