idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft

Nachrichten, Termine, Experten

Grafik: idw-Logo
Grafik: idw-Logo

idw - Informationsdienst
Wissenschaft

Science Video Project
idw-Abo

idw-News App:

AppStore

Google Play Store



Instance:
Share on: 
10/08/2024 10:02

Male or Female? AI enables sex determination of sheep based on their talus bone

Katja Henßel Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns

    SNSB researchers present an AI-based method to determine the sex of sheep with high accuracy, using only linear measurements of their talus bones.The team of archaeozoologists and computer scientists recently presented and published their results at the 20th IEEE In-ternational Conference on e-Science in Osaka, Japan.

    The new study could make it much easier for researchers to determine the sex of archaeolog-ical animal finds in the future: with the help of AI-based algorithms, the sex of sheep can be determined quickly and easily – and only on the basis of four different measurements of their ankle bone, scientifically called the talus (plural tali). The advantage of the application, especially for archaeological finds, is obvious: the ankle bones of sheep or cattle are relatively small and compact and are therefore usually well and completely preserved in archae-ological sites. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Bavarian State Collections of Natural History (SNSB) and the LMU München tested various machine-learning algorithms for their study.

    “The accuracy rate of the AI algorithms is high,” says Nadine Schüler, first author of the study and scientist at the State Collection for Palaeonanatomy Munich (SNSB-SPM) and LMU München. ”Most algorithms determine the sex correctly - up to 70 percent, some variants even manage up to 90 percent.”

    Traditionally, zoologists have used morphology to determine the sex of animals. In practice, they assess typical skeletal elements for each species, such as the pelvic bone in sheep and cattle. However, this approach is problematic for archaeological animal finds, where only fragments of the bones are usually preserved; this makes it difficult even for experts to distinguish with certainty between male and female animals. DNA analysis would be one solution, but it is costly and also requires damage to the archaeological animal remains.

    “Machine learning could be the solution, but it is rarely used in archaeozoology. In medicine AI is already used to classify human bones. Our study is a first step towards applying the methodology to archaeozoological data. The AI-based sexing method provides archaeozoologists with a quick initial assessment of their finds,” Nadine Schüler continues.

    For their study, the researchers “trained” various AI algorithms using over 240 sheep
    ankle bones for which the sex was known. The program learned to distinguish the tali of male and female animals. The “learned” method was successfully applied to 170 as-yet-unidentified sheep ankle bones from an archaeological excavation site in Mongolia.


    Contact for scientific information:

    Nadine Schüler
    SNSB - Staatssammlung für Paläoanatomie München (SNSB-ZSM)
    Kaulbachstr. 37, 80539 München
    Tel.: 089 2180 6258
    E-Mail: schueler@snsb.de


    Original publication:

    N. Schuler, P. Paxinos, J. Yuan, M. von Zastrov, J. Peters, P. Kröger. “There is Strength in Num-bers: A Comprehensive Study of Machine Learning Algorithms for Sex Identification on Animal Bone Remains” in 2024 IEEE 20th International Conference on eScience (e-Science), Osaka, Japan, 2024 pp. 1-10. doi: 10.1109/e-Science62913.2024.10678723
    https://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/e-Science62913.2024.10678723


    More information:

    http://www.snsb.de - Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns (SNSB)
    https://spm.snsb.de - Staatssammlung für Paläoanatomie München (SNSB-SPM)


    Images

    3D scan of a talus bone with the labeled measurements that can be used to determine the sex of sheep using AI-based algorithms.
    3D scan of a talus bone with the labeled measurements that can be used to determine the sex of sheep ...
    Nadine Schüler
    SNSB-SPM

    Talus bones of a modern cattle, a small Celtic cattle and an aurochs from the early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe (SE Turkey) (from left to right).
    Talus bones of a modern cattle, a small Celtic cattle and an aurochs from the early Neolithic Göbekl ...

    SNSB-SPM


    Criteria of this press release:
    Journalists, Scientists and scholars, Students, Teachers and pupils, all interested persons
    Biology, History / archaeology, Information technology, Zoology / agricultural and forest sciences
    transregional, national
    Miscellaneous scientific news/publications, Research results
    English


     

    Help

    Search / advanced search of the idw archives
    Combination of search terms

    You can combine search terms with and, or and/or not, e.g. Philo not logy.

    Brackets

    You can use brackets to separate combinations from each other, e.g. (Philo not logy) or (Psycho and logy).

    Phrases

    Coherent groups of words will be located as complete phrases if you put them into quotation marks, e.g. “Federal Republic of Germany”.

    Selection criteria

    You can also use the advanced search without entering search terms. It will then follow the criteria you have selected (e.g. country or subject area).

    If you have not selected any criteria in a given category, the entire category will be searched (e.g. all subject areas or all countries).