RECURRENT DEATHS OF GUANACOS (LAMA GUANICOE) DUE TO WINTER STRESS IN SOUTHERN PATAGONIA: AVERAGED SAMPLES AND CHANGE OF ANALYSIS SCALES

Actualistic taphonomic observations of guanaco carcasses resulting from two winter mass death events that occurred in 2020 and 2023 at various locations in the Coyle-Gallegos River interfluve (Santa Cruz, Argentina) provide valuable information about the formation of the fossil record. In this paper, we discuss how studying these die-offs allows us to monitor the formation of the so-called averaged samples. The longitudinal monitoring of carcass assemblages aggregated in different years forced us to change the scale of analysis, which gradually approached a controlled averaged sample. In this long-term study, we evaluate the main variables involved in the processes of guanaco carcass accumulation, such as the regularity and causes of massive accumulations, the locations of dead guanaco concentrations, the spatial superposition of deaths, and the variation in the size of bone patches due to processes such as carnivore action, trampling, and gravity sliding. For the analysis, we used the concepts of accumulation cycle, tempo, settling in, fossil stability, formational forcing, and retarding factors. Our results allow us to propose various conditions of bone preservation and identify spatial sectors with better burial opportunities, which are useful for constructing long-term viable analogous models, the usual ones of the archaeological and paleontological records.