DOI: 10.5061/dryad.s6fd5c6
title: Data from: Overprinting of taphonomic and paleoecological signals across the forest-prairie environmental gradient, mid-continent of North America

description: Taphonomic factors may significantly alter faunal assemblages at varying
 scales. An exceptional record of late Holocene (&lt; 4000 years old)
 mammal fanuas establishes a firm baseline to investigate the effects of
 scale on taphonomy. Our sample contains 73 sites within four contiguous
 states (North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois, USA) that transect
 a strong modern and late Holocene environmental gradient, the
 prairie-forest ecotone. We performed Detrended Correspondence Analysis
 (DCA) and Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) analyses. Both DCA
 and NMDS analyses of the datasets produced virtually the same results, and
 both failed to reveal the known ecological gradient within each state.
 However, both DCA and NMDS analyses of the unfiltered multistate dataset
 across the entire gradient clearly reflect an environmental, rather than
 taphonomic, signal. DCA tended to provide better separation of some
 clusters than did NMDS in most of the analyses. We conclude that a large
 mammal dataset collected across a strong environmental gradient will
 document species turnover without the removal of taphonomic factors. In
 other words, taphonomy exhibits varying scale-dependent effects.
description: Milideo Paleobiology
 data FINALSupplemental Table 1.
 Sites: List of site names (suffixes reflect locations: SD = South Dakota;
 ND = North Dakota; IASW=southwestern Iowa; ILNE=northeastern Illinois,
 etc.) and abbreviations, site type (A = archaeological, P =
 Paleontological) and recovery method (WS = Fine-/Water-Screen, CS =
 Coarse-Screen, NS – No Screening). All data (faunal composition, MNI,
 cultural affiliation, site references) are in the Neotoma Paleoecology
 Database (http://www.neotomadb.org/) and FAUNMAP Database. Supplemental
 Table 2. Taxa: List of species names and abbreviations and body size
 class. Size class 1 contains mammals of small size (&lt; 2 Kg), size
 category 2 (2-10 Kg), and size category 3 (&gt; 10 Kg). Supplemental Table
 3. Dakotas_all: Sites and MNI (minimum numbers of individuals) for all
 species. Supplemental Table 4. Iowa_all: Sites and MNI (minimum numbers of
 individuals) for all species. Supplemental Table 5. Illinois_all: Sites
 and MNI (minimum numbers of individuals) for all species. Supplemental
 Table 6. Dakotas_small: Sites and MNI (minimum numbers of individuals) for
 all species within size category 1 (&lt; 2 kg) only. Supplemental Table 7.
 Iowa_small: Sites and MNI (minimum numbers of individuals) for all species
 within size category 1 (&lt; 2 kg) only. Supplemental Table 8. All_sites:
 All sites and MNI (minimum number of individuals) for all species in all
 sites.MilideoetalSupplementalFigure1_2col (2)Supplemental Figure 1. NMDS biplot of North and South Dakota (A). Iowa (B), and Illinois (C) sites by body size categories.MilideoetalSupplementalFigure2_2colcorrectedSupplemental Figure 2. NMDS biplot of North and South Dakota (A), Iowa (B), and Illinois (C) sites by recovery method.MilideoetalSupplementalFigure3_2colSupplemental Figure 3. NMDS biplot of North and South Dakota sites and Iowa sites (east & west) by geographic location.