avian diet, carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes, extinct, Wairau Bar

Over 25% of endemic bird species have become extinct since the time of the first human settlement of Aotearoa | New Zealand in the mid-13th century CE. This has been attributed to multiple factors, including human impact from over-hunting, habitat loss, and the introduction of successive waves of novel mammalian predators. In this study, we analyse carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) stable isotope values from bulk bone collagen of 19 positively identified living and extinct bird species from the coastal pre-contact (i.e.