Textural ageing in pygoscelis antarctica (Aves, Sphenisciformes): A new comparative scale for penguin bones

Abstract

Textural ageing is a technique that recognizes the bone texture as a clear indicator of the post-natal ontogenetic stages in birds. Although it was only tested in a few groups of birds, the results obtained in the pioneer works were widely applied. Though convinced of the effectiveness of this technique, we also believe that given the variability that exists between birds, its application should be done using a reliable comparative scale. In this contribution, a post-natal ontogenetic series for Pygoscelis antarctica was built to analyze the textural ageing in penguins. We used the same descriptive terms to characterize each texture as in previous contributions, to make the scales comparable to each other. The variations were standardized, and a new comparative scale for penguins was proposed.