Zooarchaeologists have developed and used several techniques for estimating the body mass of individual prey animals. Many of these are based on skeletal variables such as minimum number of individuals, weight of remains, or linear dimensions of long bone articular ends. All of these techniques fail to account for individual variability in body mass across the lifespan driven by the primary productivity of the landscape, sex, ontogeny, and season of individual death. Because skeletons are weight-bearing, they constantly remodel in response to changes in body mass, making long bone cross-sectional properties an ideal metric for predicting body mass. Cross-sectional geometric properties of distal limb bones and body mass of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) were measured in a sample of 64 recently harvested individuals. Best-fit regressions between cross-sectional skeletal dimensions and dressed body weight produce higher R-squared values and lower standard errors of the estimate than regressions between dressed body weight and linear dimensions of long bone articular ends. Cross-sectional geometry can provide new useful line of evidence for estimating body mass of prey animals, when available.

动物考古学家已经开发并使用了多种技术来估计单个猎物的体重。其中许多是基于骨骼变量的，例如最少的个体数量，残留物的重量或长骨关节端的线性尺寸。所有这些技术都无法解决由景观，性别，个体发育和个体死亡季节的主要生产力所驱动的整个生命周期中体重的个体差异。由于骨骼是承重的，因此它们会根据体重的变化而不断重塑，从而使长的骨骼横截面特性成为预测体重的理想指标。白尾鹿（Odocoileus virginianus）的远肢骨的横截面几何特性和体重）是在64位最近收获的个体的样本中进行测量的。与长体重骨关节末端的线性体重和线性关系相比，横断面骨骼尺寸与穿戴的体重之间的最佳拟合回归产生更高的R平方值和较低的估计标准误。横截面的几何形状可以为估算捕食动物的体重（如果有）提供新的有用的证据。