A New Morphological and Morphometrical Toolkit to Identify the Postcranial Remains of the Bovidae and Cervidae Species from Continental Southeast Asia

Supalak Mithong1*, Sirikanya Chantasri1, Papavee Seesod2, and Corentin Bochaton1

The morphological identification of animal bone remains from the Late Quaternary has long been debated. While a comprehensive methodological toolkit has been developed — primarily in the Northern Hemisphere – to address specific issues, the osteology of tropical faunas is still poorly documented. This creates a paradox: regions with the highest taxonomic diversity suffer from a chronic lack of reference materials, which makes reliable documentation of their subfossil record particularly challenging. Southeast Asia is no exception; few studies have focused on the osteology of the terrestrial vertebrates, particularly their postcranial elements. To address this gap, we conducted morphological and morphometric studies to establish visual and metric identification criteria applicable to all ruminant species in continental Southeast Asia. We focused on limb bones, which are common in archaeological records but have been understudied. Our approach combined a global morphometric analysis with the identification of discriminant osteological criteria for medium and large species. The results highlight both the potential and limitations of morphological methods for identifying postcranial elements across a broad range of species within the same taxonomic groups. We also developed user-friendly HTML applications, allowing researchers to apply our findings to archaeological samples. This approach should improve the replicability and reliability of taxonomic identification in the Late Quaternary record of continental Southeast Asia, where access to comparative collections is often limited.