A multi-proxy investigation into Southern Caribbean sea turtle populations to assess long-term impacts of human activities for baseline reconstructions.

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Biomolecular Approaches to Human-Animal Interactions Past and Present" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Caribbean sea turtle histories are deeply intertwined with past human activities. It has long been acknowledged that to fully support sea turtle recovery we must account for the activities acting on populations prior to modern baselines. As sea turtles are long-lived, species level data spanning multiple generations must be captured to accurately identify biomolecular response to change and assess species resilience to human activities. Species level identifications are needed for zooarchaeologists to accurately reconstruct past populations so that they can serve as comparative datasets for conservation planning. Caribbean zooarchaeological analyses relying on morphological identifications have traditionally been hindered by high rates of fragmentation for sea turtle bones, preventing species attributions.

We apply Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) to 25 highly fragmented turtle remains from Curaçao and Bonaire, held in the NAAM foundation's legacy collections. Subsequent ancient DNA analysis is performed on specimens identified as green turtles (Chelonia mydas) to gain insight into temporal changes in relative abundance and genetic biodiversity. Our data show the potential for ZooMS and ancient DNA to provide long-term perspectives on sea turtle population dynamics and the value of data from larger sample sets for conservation policy that supports sustainable management of these charismatic keystone species.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Global Perspectives on Biomolecular Approaches to Human-Animal Interactions Past and Present

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50816