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Hi all,

As part of our current project ’The Easter E.g. - Shifting Baselines and Changing Perceptions of Cultural and Biological Aliens’  http://easter-origins.org/ we’ve developed an 'Ancient Animal' App to gather representation data (e.g. iconographic and physical remains) for native, extinct and introduced species.

In part this is a fun citizen science project and we already have lots of records coming in from communities who are surveying their church architecture and town centres. It’s surprisingly good fun - like Pokemon Go but with a research purpose - when you look, animal representations are everywhere!

But we have also set up the App so that the zooarch community can upload zooarchaeological records. For instance, if you have found an archaeological lion bone, or a medieval aurochs bone, you can upload an image plus its find spot so that we - as a community - can build up a database to help us understand the bio-cultural histories of the animals around us but also so that we can provide evidence upon which wildlife management policy can be based. There is such a need for the latter.

The App is available for download worldwide. At the moment, the fauna list on the App is focused on animals (currently just mammals) that are, or have been, present in Britain at some point. In its next iteration it will contain other fauna (birds, fish, reptiles) and have a more global.

I know a lot of you are undertaking studies of particular species - beavers, camels, pigs, dogs, foxes, rats - and I hope that this App will be useful for your projects. Indeed, many of you have helped with the development of the App (thank you so much for sending text and images!).

You can find details of how to download it here:

http://easter-origins.org/media-engagement

I hope you’ll join the hunt!

All the best, Naomi