Dear Charlie,
Horse bones are not easy to sex. Sexual dimorphism is not great. However,
there are slight size differences that you can sometimes pick out if you
have a very big sample - many years ago (in my PhD) I did a principal
components analysis which did this to a certain extent. Well developed
canines are, to my knowledge, only found in males, though vestigal ones are
quite often found in females. The pelvis can sometimes be sexed especially
in mature individuals. See Sisson and Grossman's Anatomy of Domestic
Animals for quite a lot of detail about when it can an cannot be done - ie
young horses can't, it seems, be reliably sexed and males gelded young
share some features with mares.
best wishes,
Marsha
On Oct 24 2005, Charlie Stokes wrote:
>Dear All,
>
>Can anybody point me in the direction of literature
>dealing with sexing horse skeletons from the bones?
>
>I'm not having any success in finding anything at the
>moment (but I could well be looking in the wrong
>place!)
>
>thanks
>
>charlie
>
>
>
>___________________________________________________________
>How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday
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>
--
Dr. Marsha Levine, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3ER, England
phone: +44 (0)1223-339347 / fax: +44 (0)1223-339285
http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/~ml12/
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