# Puma (Puma concolor) modifications on medium-sized mammals: Can its taphonomic signature be differentiated from other South American carnivores?

> What do a puma’s leftovers look like? Researchers in Argentina fed rabbits to two captive pumas and studied every bone left behind. The pumas left mostly skulls and lower leg bones, heavily broken and tooth-marked, a pattern very like that of foxes and wild cats, though the puma’s tooth punctures could be larger.

Summary by Kersey Lawrence, Original Wisdom. Updated 7 November 2026. Page: https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2024-alvarez-massigoge-puma-taphonomic-signature/

## Citation and access

- **Authors:** María Clara Álvarez, Agustina Massigoge, Mariela E. González, Cristian A. Kaufmann, Nahuel A. Scheifler, María A. Gutiérrez
- **Year published:** 2024
- **Journal or source:** Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 54: 104422
- **Full citation:** Álvarez, M.C., Massigoge, A., González, M.E., Kaufmann, C.A., Scheifler, N.A., and Gutiérrez, M.A. 2024. Puma (Puma concolor) modifications on medium-sized mammals: Can its taphonomic signature be differentiated from other South American carnivores? Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 54: 104422.
- **DOI:** 10.1016/j.jasrep.2024.104422
- **Access status:** Publisher link only
- **Where to find it:** https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2024.104422

## Tags

- **Species:** Mammals > Mountain lion
- **Region:** South America > Argentina
- **Behaviour and ecology:** Behaviour; Feeding
- **Methods and technology:** Bone damage analysis; Descriptive statistics; Mann–Whitney U test; Minimum number of individuals (MNI)
- **Data type:** New field data
- **Discipline:** Taphonomy
- **Year published:** 2024

## Detailed keywords

- **Species:** Studied: puma (Puma concolor), two captive adult males. Prey offered: European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus), ten dead rabbits. Comparison species from earlier experiments in the same programme: Pampas fox (Lycalopex gymnocercus) and Geoffroy’s cat (Leopardus geoffroyi). Native medium-sized prey the rabbit stands in for: plains vizcacha (Lagostomus maximus), armadillos (Dasypodidae, Chlamyphoridae), Patagonian hare or mara (Dolichotis patagonum). Prey in other studies cited: guanaco (Lama guanicoe), huemul (Hippocamelus bisulcus), sheep, dwarf armadillo (Zaedyus pichiy), porcupine, jackrabbit (Lepus sp.).
- **Location and habitat:** La Máxima Biopark, Olavarría, Buenos Aires province, Argentina, in the Pampas ecoregion (temperate humid grassland with the Tandilia and Ventania hill systems). Pumas were extirpated from the Pampas by the mid-20th century and have recolonized much of the region since the 1970s.
- **Topics:** taphonomic signature of the puma; non-ingested bone remains of medium-sized prey; skeletal part representation; bone fragmentation; tooth marks (pits, punctures, scores, crenulated edges, furrowing); puncture size; comparison with Pampas fox and Geoffroy’s cat; captive feeding experiments; human and carnivore interactions in archaeological sites; puma recolonization of the Pampas
- **Statistics or models:** Number of identified specimens (NISP), minimum number of elements (MNE), minimum number of individuals (MNI) and relative abundance (%Ri); skeletal representation indices (PCRT/CR, PCRAP/CR, PCRLB/CR, AUT/ZE, Z/E, AP/ZE, AN/PO); puncture length, width and area measured with ImageJ; Mann–Whitney U pairwise tests on median lengths of specimens and punctures (significance level 0.05).
- **Data type:** New experimental data: one feeding experiment in 2011 (ten rabbits over five days), compared with earlier published experiments on Pampas fox and Geoffroy’s cat, plus new puncture measurements from those experiments. Inconsistencies in the paper: (1) the abstract gives punctures “ranging in size from 3 mm to 8 mm”, but the results give a minimum of 1.9 mm, a median of 3 mm and a maximum of 8.4 mm. (2) The text gives the same share (30%) of tooth-marked specimens with punctures and with scores, but Table 3 lists 24 specimens with punctures and 22 with scores out of 72 tooth-marked specimens (33% and 31%).

## Synopsis

### 1. What they did

Archaeologists in the Argentine Pampas want to know how much carnivores, as well as people, shaped the bone remains found at ancient sites. To build a reference for the puma, the authors fed ten dead European rabbits, two a day for five days, to two adult male pumas kept at La Máxima Biopark in Olavarría. The rabbit stands in for native medium-sized prey such as plains vizcacha, armadillos and mara.

They collected all the bones the pumas left, measured and identified every piece, and examined each under a microscope for fractures and tooth marks. They measured the punctures, then compared the results with earlier, similar experiments with captive Pampas foxes and Geoffroy’s cats.

### 2. What they found

- The pumas left 514 bone pieces, 87% identifiable, from at least five of the ten rabbits. Pieces were 3.2 to 85.0 mm long (mean 16.2 mm).
- Skulls, tibiae, metatarsals, astragali and calcanei were most common. The scapula, humerus and patella were missing entirely, and vertebrae, ribs and the forelimb were scarce, so the pumas probably swallowed those smaller, less dense bones.
- 54% of the pieces showed carnivore damage: 51% were fractured, mostly irregularly, and 14% carried tooth marks. Pits were the most frequent mark, then scores and punctures; crenulated edges were also common.
- Of 28 punctures, 22 could be measured: mean maximum length 3.6 mm, median 3 mm, range 1.9 to 8.4 mm.
- Compared with the fox and the wild cat, the pumas left the fewest pieces, ate the forelimbs and sometimes the pelvis, and left pieces with a significantly greater median length. Their punctures were larger, though not significantly, and reached sizes the smaller carnivores never made.

### 3. What they concluded

On medium-sized prey, the bones a puma leaves are dominated by the skull and the lower limb bones, especially of the hindlimb, and are highly fragmented with many tooth marks. The signatures of puma, Pampas fox and Geoffroy’s cat are very similar, so no single feature yet separates them; prey size probably explains much of this. The authors call for studies of ingested remains, pit measurements and wild pumas, since captive animals may chew bones more than wild ones.

### 7. Implications for conservation (from the paper)

- Recognizing puma damage on bones can show where pumas lived in the past and what they ate, which helps in understanding their former range in the Pampas, where they were extirpated and are now returning.

### 8. Implications for tracking (Original Wisdom's observations)

_These are Original Wisdom's observations, not the authors'._

- The size and pattern of tooth marks, and which bones are left behind, are signs a tracker can read at a feeding site. This study gives reference measurements for puma punctures on rabbit-sized prey, though from captive animals.

## Cite this summary

Lawrence, K. 2026. Summary of: Puma (Puma concolor) modifications on medium-sized mammals: Can its taphonomic signature be differentiated from other South American carnivores? (Álvarez and Massigoge et al., 2024). Original Wisdom, Tracking Literature. https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2024-alvarez-massigoge-puma-taphonomic-signature/