Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) have shaped the cultures and provided livelihood to peoples of the Northern Hemisphere for thousands of years. They are still the socio-economic cornerstone of many northern cultures. Insight into reindeer mortality patterns is important for understanding past human–reindeer interactions and reindeer population fluctuations in relation to climatic and environmental change. Beyond archaeology, assessing the age structures of modern reindeer populations is important for developing wildlife management strategies. This paper presents a quick, non-destructive and cheap method to estimate age in reindeer in both modern and ancient populations based on tooth wear and eruption patterns of mandibular teeth. We devised the method using a large sample of Svalbard reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus) of known age. We blind-tested the method and tested its applicability on another known-age Svalbard reindeer mandible assemblage. The tests demonstrate our methods' user-friendliness and reliability to generate reproducible, reusable datasets and accuracy in estimating reindeer age-at-death.

中文翻译：

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通过牙齿判断驯鹿：一种用户友好的牙齿磨损和萌出模式记录方案，用于估计驯鹿（Rangifer tarandus）的死亡年龄


几千年来，驯鹿（ Rangifer tarandus ）塑造了北半球的文化并为人们提供了生计。它们仍然是许多北方文化的社会经济基石。深入了解驯鹿死亡率模式对于了解过去的人类与驯鹿相互作用以及与气候和环境变化相关的驯鹿种群波动非常重要。除了考古学之外，评估现代驯鹿种群的年龄结构对于制定野生动物管理策略也很重要。本文提出了一种快速、非破坏性且廉价的方法，根据牙齿磨损和下颌牙齿萌出模式来估计现代和古代驯鹿的年龄。我们使用大量已知年龄的斯瓦尔巴驯鹿（ Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus ）样本设计了该方法。我们对该方法进行了盲测，并在另一个已知年龄的斯瓦尔巴驯鹿下颌组合上测试了其适用性。这些测试证明了我们的方法的用户友好性和可靠性，可以生成可重复、可重复使用的数据集，以及估计驯鹿死亡年龄的准确性。