Telling claw marks from tooth marks on bones

Adam Khor

Not paleontology really but interesting all the same:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0073811

Rubecula

That is interesting, not a subject I have ever thought about. I have always just taken it for granted that a tooth mark is just that, a tooth mark. But then again I am not really much of a forensic expert.

Adam Khor

Even experts sometimes have trouble to tell them apart... remember how the Taung australopithecine skull was once said to bear tooth marks from a leopard attack, and later it was said that the marks were actually from a crowned eagle's talons?
Last thing I read was that they weren´t even sure of that anymore as the leopard bite/eagle talon pattern was hard to tell apart and there was a possibility that it was, after all, a leopard bite... so who knows :pac: