CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Athene cunicularia is a very common opportunistic raptor inhabiting diverse environments of South America. Ithas variable hunting behavior and diet habits, feeding mostly on arthropods and nocturnal and diurnal micromammals. We evaluated taphonomically mammal bones accumulated in pellet samples produced by thisraptor recovered from different areas of Central Argentina. The sum of the observed taphonomic attributes onconsumed skeletal elements (digestion, relative abundance, indexes, and breakage) allow assigning this speciesto the category of moderate modification, but with several attributes located in a different category with respectto previous classification. This difference may be linked with the representation and body mass of prey; when thesample has larger prey (e.g. caviomorph rodents), there is a higher degree of modification in bones. Results ofthis evaluation were used for comparison with paleontological and archaeological sites in Argentina, where thisowl was indicated as one of the possible accumulator agents. We propose that only large fossil samples allow agood evaluation of taxonomic diversity and therefore of the prey body mass representation. Here, we applied anew categorization of rodent skull breakage. Finally, this evaluation of modern samples leads to the incorporation of molariforms of Octodontidae (Rodentia) and teeth of Chiroptera in the categories of modificationsby digestion.