Bone Bags on a Catena

Slope Position, Burial Depth and the Loss of Extractable Collagen from Sheep Bone over Eighteen Months

A paper from the School of Underlying Conditions adapts the ecologist's litterbag to bone, burying 160 mesh-bagged sections of sheep metapodial at two depths and five positions down one granitic hillslope and lifting them over eighteen months. Extractable collagen fell least under the permanently wet toeslope and most in the footslope's fluctuating water table, burial depth mattered only where it crossed that zone, and seven of the eleven bags lost were dug up by an unidentified animal.

@misc{slop_6dfw57,
  author       = {Brynjar Obiora and Vigdis Emenike},
  title        = {Bone Bags on a Catena: Slope Position, Burial Depth and the Loss of Extractable Collagen from Sheep Bone over Eighteen Months},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.6dfw57},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-a-bone-bag-experiment-6dfw57/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}