Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Department

Biology

First Advisor

Denise Smith

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationships between the early taphanomic degradation of chicken feathers and the environmental/biological variables that affected the feather's physical characteristics. The variables tested included sediment type, length of burial, and bacteria. We examined the physical changes that occurred in Rooster Chinchilla Rounds from the species Gallus gallus when they were inoculated with Bacillus subtilis bacteria from local soil and buried in two different sediments. The sediments tested were local silt from St. Joseph River and ash deposits from Mount St. Helen's 1980 eruption. We analyzed for changes in barbule count, macrostructure, for fossilization of feathers.

Subject Area

Feathers, Fossil., Taphonomy., Red junglefowl.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/honors/118/

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