Description of fossil muskoxen and relative abundance of Pleistocene megafauna in central Alberta
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Significant work has gone into describing Ice Age faunas from Alberta, but relatively little work has been dedicated to understanding the actual structure of Quaternary faunal assemblages in the province. Development of such a data set is necessary to fully understand differences in faunal assemblages that existed before and after the last glacial maximum, and may eventually provide an important historical perspective for understanding the impact of large-scale ecosystem disturbance. Muskoxen fossils from central Alberta were examined to differentiate specimens of Bootherium and Ovibos . Those remains, along with other fossils of Pleistocene megafauna collected from gravel deposits near Edmonton, were used to examine patterns of relative abundance from both pre- and postglacial maximum time periods. Relative abundance for genera of Pleistocene megafauna was calculated using the number of individual specimens (NISP) from 11 individual localities (i.e., gravel pits) in central Alberta. Preglacial localities with statistically significant numbers of specimens (n ≥ 30) are dominated by horse ( Equus ). Mammoth ( Mammuthus ) and bison ( Bison ) are common, but other megafauna, such as Jefferson’s Ground Sloth ( Megalonyx jeffersoni ) and Yesterday’s Camel ( Camelops hesternus ), are comparatively rare. Current data for the postglacial fauna indicate a shift in which Bison becomes the most abundant large herbivore on the landscape, a pattern observed in other parts of North America.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".