Date: May 16, 2019
Source: Simon Fraser University
Which
came first, the pigs or the pioneers? In Barbados, that has been a historical
mystery ever since the first English colonists arrived on the island in 1627 to
encounter what they thought was a herd of wild European pigs.
A recent
discovery by an SFU archaeologist is shedding new light on the matter.
Christina Giovas uncovered the jaw bone of a peccary, a South American mammal
that resembles a wild pig, while researching a larger project on prehistoric
animal introductions in the Caribbean.
"I
didn't give it much notice at the time, but simply collected it along with
other bones," says Giovas, the lead author of a study just published
in PLOS ONE. "It was completely unexpected and I honestly thought I
must have made a mistake with the species identification."
Giovas
and collaborators George Kamenov and John Krigbaum of the University of Florida
radiocarbon-dated the bone and conducted strontium isotope analysis to
determine the age and whether the peccary was born on Barbados or had been
imported from elsewhere.
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