{
  "abstract": "Postcranial remains of large-bodied ruminants are abundant in the Late Quaternary record of continental Southeast Asia, yet their taxonomic attribution remains one of the least resolved problems in the zooarchaeology of this biodiversity-rich region. We address it here with an osteological identification protocol covering the six large ruminant species of the mainland: Bubalus bubalis, Bos javanicus, Bos sauveli, Bos gaurus, Budorcas taxicolor and Rusa unicolor, built from a comparative sample of 109 skeletons. A total of 148 discrete characters over 27 skeletal elements representing 442 states were defined on a restricted set of individuals, then scored across the entire sample. Most proved remarkably stable within taxa with 80.0% of the character/taxon combinations showing a dominant state at a frequency above 95%, and a substantial number of states occurred in a single family, subfamily, genus or species. Character combinations for taxonomic identification were then evaluated by the use of two supervised machine learning methods, a random forest model and a naive Bayes classifier at each of four taxonomic ranks. The two behaved almost identically, with mean accuracies of 95-94% for families, 93% for subfamilies, 89% for genera and 76% for species; only the three closely related and unevenly sampled species of Bos resisted consistent separation. The weighted naive Bayes models are distributed as a standalone web application in which any combination of states observed on a single element returns attribution probabilities for every rank. Together these results offer a transparent and statistically explicit alternative to expert judgement for the identification of Late Quaternary postcranial mammal remains, in Southeast Asia and elsewhere.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier, Universite de Montpellier, CNRS, IRD - Montpellier, France"
  ],
  "article_type": "New results",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 5,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "S. Chantasri"
    },
    {
      "name": "S. Mithong"
    },
    {
      "name": "J. Claude"
    },
    {
      "name": "P. Seesod"
    },
    {
      "name": "C. Bochaton"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/7s0tvx6ndvn8n.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.64898/2026.10.23.761339",
  "fulltext_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.23.761339v1.full",
  "id": "7s0tvx6ndvn8n",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.23.761339v1",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-NC-ND",
  "licence_label": "CC BY-NC-ND",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "biorxiv",
      "zoology"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": null,
  "pdf_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.23.761339v1.full.pdf",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-23",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/7s0tvx6ndvn8n.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:30:31Z",
      "native_id": "10.64898/2026.10.23.761339",
      "source": "biorxiv",
      "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.23.761339v1"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "biorxiv:zoology",
      "subfield": "zoology-behaviour"
    }
  ],
  "title": "A comprehensive identification protocol for postcranial bones of Southeast Asian Ruminantia. Part 3: Morphological criteria for large-sized species",
  "title_text": "A comprehensive identification protocol for postcranial bones of Southeast Asian Ruminantia. Part 3: Morphological criteria for large-sized species",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-31T00:20:54Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/7s0tvx6ndvn8n",
  "venue": "bioRxiv",
  "versions": []
}