At archaeological sites around the world, a certain subset of remains is usually overlooked: rodent bones. Rats have lived (and died) alongside people for thousands of years, leaving small skeletons behind throughout history. Few researchers have examined these diminutive bits of the past, in favor of more charismatic finds. But a new study digs into details of rat bones unearthed at settlement sites and collected from shipwrecks across eastern North America. It uncovers evidence that one hyper-invasive rat species arrived decades earlier than previously thought and rapidly dominated over another to colonize U.S. and Canadian cities.
In the new paper, published April 3 in the journal Science Advances, a team of biomolecular archaeologists, zooarchaeologists, and other scientists analyzed remains from more than 300 rodents previously found at 32 locations along the U.S.’s Eastern and Gulf coasts and the Maritime and St. Laurence regions of Canada. The sites, spanning in age from 1559 to the early 1900s, include early ports and settlements as well as seven shipwrecks explored through damming, dredging, and diving.
“So little work has been done with archaeological rats,” says lead study author Eric Guiry, a biomolecular archaeologist at Trent University. As a result of this vacuum of information, Guiry says he and his colleagues were able to make several surprising finds about the types of rats present throughout time. The research could better inform our scientific understanding of one of history’s greatest pests.
“It’s a really interesting combination of data,” says Jonathan Richardson, an integrative biologist uninvolved in the new research who studies urban rats at the University of Richmond. Black and brown rats behave differently, carry different zoonotic…
Read the full article here