ZooMS

ZooMS (Zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry) is a scientific method that identifies animal species by means of characteristic peptide sequences in the protein collagen. Samples are usually taken from bones, teeth, antlers or artefacts from archaeological excavations. Instead of looking at the life-form’s DNA, ZooMS looks at a protein produced with the DNA as its blueprint. The method was developed by Matthew Collins and Michael Buckley and first published in 2010.[1][2][3][4]

Like ancient DNA analysis, ZooMS can identify the species of worked bone objects and small fragments where no morphological characteristics survive, and offers the ease and security of sending small sample tubes for analysis rather than entire bones or artefacts. The price of a ZooMS analysis is however far lower than that of aDNA.

References
  1. Buckley, M., S. W. Kansa, S. Howard, S. Campbell, J. Thomas-Oates & M. J. Collins. 2010. Distinguishing between archaeological sheep and goat bones using a single collagen peptide. Journal of Archaeological Science 37: 13-20.
  2. Collins, M., M. Buckley, H.H. Grundy, J. Thomas-Oates, J. Wilson & N. Van Doorn. 2010. ZooMS: the collagen barcode and fingerprints. Spectroscopy Europe 22: 6-10.
  3. Richter, K. K., J. Wilson, A. K. G. Jones, M. Buckley, N. L. Van Doorn & M.J. Collins. 2011. Fish 'n chips: ZooMS peptide mass fingerprinting in a 96 well plate format to identify fish bone fragments. Journal of Archaeological Science 38: 1502-1510.
  4. Van Doorn, Nienke L. (2014). "Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS)". Van Doorn, N. L. in Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology 7998–8000 (Springer New York, 2014). pp. 7998–8000. doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_2418. ISBN 978-1-4419-0426-3.


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