Owls, multirejection and completeness of prey remains: implications for small mammal taphonomy

Abstract. For more than twenty years, taphonomic studies have focused on bone and teeth modifications from owl prey remains due to digestion (fragmentation, dissolution by gas-tric juices) in order to recognize which predator(s) has (have) originated fossil bone as-semblages and which bias could have occurred in terms of paleoenvironmental and archaeological interpretations. Such studies have neglected the fact that meals, particu-larly when large prey individuals are eaten, are sometimes spread within several pellets. This study aims to estimate the occurrence and the taphonomic consequences of prey mul-tirejection within modern Barn Owl pellet samples recovered in the wild from France and South Africa, and establish their different diets. The taphonomic observation of the con-tents of each pellet has displayed patterns of completeness of prey skeleton proportionate to the size of prey per pellets. In the African owl pellets 60 % of the largest rodents are rep-resented by the postcranial parts without the skull and/or some complete limbs, or are rep-resented by the skull only. The pattern for small prey species is less than 20%. The pellets from France include remains of small rodents and shrews, the skeletons of which rarely exhibit the pattern observed in the African pellets and are more complete, apart from 20