> Valenzuela-Toro looked at the size and morphology of sea lion skulls collected between 1962 and 2008 in central California and now held at the California Academy of Sciences
"As the California sea lion population got bigger, so did the collected skulls", is what I read. I cannot find the method of collecting the skulls from the paper or the one paper I was able to read that this paper sourced.
If humans were hunting, poaching, or collecting dead animal skulls, there could very well be some influence on the size of the skulls from their desire to hunt/poach bigger game and or collect a bigger specimen than they previously collected/hunted/poached. If I was out collecting for grins and giggles, and I had a sack full of skulls, I would likely throw out the small ones to fit a bigger one than is in my sack or larger than what I have at home.
Another possibility is that they collected larger skulls because there is more pressure on the larger animals as time progressed in the study period, creating a larger supply of the larger skulls. On average, the animals may in fact be smaller.
Its a scientific collection. Not just some random poacher's loot. Building such collections of specimens to support is crucial to life sciences in particular.[0]
This skull collection is the life work of Ray Bandar.[1]
"As the California sea lion population got bigger, so did the collected skulls", is what I read. I cannot find the method of collecting the skulls from the paper or the one paper I was able to read that this paper sourced.
If humans were hunting, poaching, or collecting dead animal skulls, there could very well be some influence on the size of the skulls from their desire to hunt/poach bigger game and or collect a bigger specimen than they previously collected/hunted/poached. If I was out collecting for grins and giggles, and I had a sack full of skulls, I would likely throw out the small ones to fit a bigger one than is in my sack or larger than what I have at home.
Another possibility is that they collected larger skulls because there is more pressure on the larger animals as time progressed in the study period, creating a larger supply of the larger skulls. On average, the animals may in fact be smaller.