Allowen Evin

TL;DR: The first genetic signatures of early domestic pigs in the Near Eastern Neolithic core zone are revealed and it is demonstrated that these early pigs differed genetically from those in western Anatolia that were introduced to Europe during the Neolithic expansion.

TL;DR: Comparisons of dental morphometric descriptors in wild and domestic pigs indicate that geometric morphometrics offers an extremely powerful alternative to more traditional biometric approaches of length and width measurements to capture the elusive morphological changes induced by the domestication process in archaeological remains.

TL;DR: This paper showed that European domestic pigs dating from 7,100 to 6,000 y BP possessed both Near Eastern and European nuclear ancestry, while later pigs possessed no more than 4% Near Eastern ancestry, indicating that gene flow from European wild boars resulted in a near complete disappearance of Near East ancestry.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that photogrammetry can produce 3D models with visually satisfying levels of morphological detail in terms of texture, colouration and geometry, affording advantages that make it a highly useful tool for zooarchaeological research.

TL;DR: The application of geometric morphometric analyses to ancient small felid bones from China dating between 5,500 to 4,900 BP, instead reveal these and other remains to be that of the leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis), indicating the origins of a human-cat ‘domestic’ relationship in Neolithic China began independently from South-West Asia and involved a different wild felid species altogether.