Unravelling the Taphonomic Stories of Bird Bones from the Middle Pleistocene Layer VIII of Grotte Vaufrey, France

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

It is a very interesting and well-written paper. It brings a number of new things to our knowledge of the Grotte Vaufrey taphonomy; it also shows the interpretability of assemblages of complicated origins. I also like the fairly extensive introduction, which is a sort of review in itself. My comments are mainly of an editorial nature. I recommend accepting the manuscript with minor corrections.

I would supplement the title of the paper with information about the country where Grotte Vaufrey is located ("... layer VIII of Grotte Vaufrey, France").

Line 87; "... arranchements and holes ...": (i) spelling mistake - there should be "arrangements"; (ii) this phrase is unclear to me. How to understand "arrangements" in this context? Or is it "arrangements of holes" (not "and")?

Line 122, "... R. Vaufrey ...": a sentence beginning with a name initial looks strange. Better to give the full name if known.

Lines 124/125, „…the work were…”: replace "work" with "works" to make the subject agree with the verb (singular / plural).

Lines 217/2018, "A small selection of remains was borrowed from the MNP to perform further analyzes ...": Does this statement apply only to the ESEM studies, or also to all other studies described in lines 2017-231? This needs to be clarified. I believe that the research described in lines 220-231 should be performed on all remains, not just a small sample of them.

Line 236: the word "vestiges" seems strange to me in this context. I would replace it with remains, specimens or bones.

Lines 260-261, "... the size 4 category is the most important, representing nearly three-quarters of the total assemblage (Table A2)". Something is wrong, because in Table A2 you can see that the size 4 category includes 1055 specimens, which is 89.3% of the total of 1181 specimens (while three-quarters = 75%).

Line 304: What do you mean by "proximal coracoid"? For coracoid, the terms "proximal" and "distal" are very ambiguous. Better to use "omal" and "sternal".

Lines 466-467: It is a bit risky to say that this specimen is "... the oldest known raptor remains clearly associated with the procurement of edible products ...". Since it is only a fragment of one bone, it may have been an admixture of younger layers. Nor am I sure if you can draw such far-reaching conclusions from several incisions on a single specimen. Undoubtedly, this specimen should be described and interpreted, but it should be noted that the conclusions are not completely certain.

It is most reader-friendly when all Tables and Figures can be understood without looking at Materials and Methods. Therefore, I suggest extending Captions (see below).

Caption to Figure 2: Explain the abbreviation "NRD" and size categories (or make a reference to Material and Methods to explain size categories).

Caption to Figure 3: replace "distal coracoid" with "sternal coracoid"

Caption to Table A1: (i) replace "Vaufrey" with "Grotte Vaufrey"; (ii) explain the abbreviations: lsz, msz, ssz, NR; (iii) replace "NME" with "MNE"; (iv) explain the term "size category" or refer to Material and Methods.

Table A1: Replace "NMI" with "MNI" (and explain in Caption that MNI was counted for whole layers without taxa division (?)).

Caption to Table A2: (i) replace "Vaufrey" with "Grotte Vaufrey"; (ii) explain the abbreviation "NRD"; (iii) explain the terms "size 1, size 2, etc" or refer to Material and Methods; (iv) explain the abbreviations of the skeleton element names.

Caption to Table A3: (i) explain the terms "size 1, size 2, etc" or refer to Material and Methods; (ii) explain the abbreviation "msz"; (iii) explain why only selected size categories are analyzed.

References: in the surname "Bochenski", please replace the Polish letter "ń" with ordinary "n". Only in older works I used the Polish spelling, but later I gave it up, because it resulted in the loss of citations (even now, only some journals encode foreign surnames in such a way that they are recognized regardless of the spelling). It doesn't make sense to create two different "Bochenskis", so you'd better stick with one spelling. Unfortunately, we live in an age where scientific work is assessed in all possible ways, including the number of citations ;-(

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

Unravelling the taphonomic stories of bird bones from the Middle Pleistocene layer VIII of Grotte Vaufrey

Comments:

line 36 -  “Thus, birds, …” to replace with “ Thus, birds of smaller body size, …”

line 40 -  “tendons or …” to replace with “tendons, eggshells or …”

line 82 -  “chewing marks…” to replace with “chewing and gnawing marks …”

line 83 – “as these animals …” to replace with “as these animals in most cases …”

line 110 – “processing of birds” to replace with “processing of bird’ body parts”

line 149 – Official English name of Bison priscus is “steppe bison” or “steppe wisent”.

line 149 – “tar” to replace with “?Bonal tar”

line 152 – “lynx” to replace with “Cave lynx”

line 152 – Official English name of Meles meles is “European badger”.

line 188  - “within the bones” to replace with “within the long bones (ossa longa tubulossa)”

line 203 – “wing remains (humeri, ulnae and carpometacarpi)”. What about radii?

line 200 – “medium-sized Corvidae” to replace with “medium-sized (msz) Corvidae”, as “msz” is used later in the text. This abbreviation is explained only on line 283.

line 222 – “beak marks” to replace with “beak and claw marks”

line 312 – “beak” to replace with “beak and claw”

line 396-397 – “digestive corrosion in light or moderate degrees”. The digestive corrosion is different in bones of adult and juvenile individuals.

Line 421 – “(anatids of Charadriiformes)” to replace with  “(anatids and Charadriiformes)”

line 422 – “they were introduced into the cavity by an external agent”. This is true if we are sure that there are no open “windows” on the cave ceiling for penetration of their body remains from outside.

line 443 – “thermoalerations” to replace with “thermoalterations”

line 459 – “golden eagle”. To add Latin name as for other raptor species bellow.

line 466 – “femur appears to be … remains” to replace with “femur appears to be … remain”

line 499 – “variety of resources” to replace with “variety of animal resources”

line 470-471 – Table 4 - G. melitensis/fulvus.  G. melitensis was of 20 % larger than G. fulvus:  Weesie P. D. M. 1988. The Quaternary avifauna of Crete, Greece. - Palaeovertebrata, 18 (1), 1-107.; Boev, Z. 2010. Gyps bochenskii sp. n. (Aves: Falconiformes) from the Late Pliocene of Varshets (NW Bulgaria). – Acta zoologica bulgarica, 62 (2): 211-242.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc