Hungry like a wolf: new insights from old bones housed in the BGS museum collections
BGS scientists are studying the diets of ancient British wolves and how they adapted to changing environments.
18/01/2024
Studying the diet of an animal that roams the Earth today is relatively straightforward. Their eating habits can be easily tracked and their food sources monitored using their faecal matter (‘scat’). But how do you study the diet of animals that have been dead for thousands of years? The NERC/UKRI-funded project ‘Hungry like a wolf’, carried out by BGS together with Royal Holloway University London, aims to do exactly that: study the diets of wolves that lived in Britain during the last 250 000 years.
Investigating ancient animals’ diets
The project adopts the adage ‘we are what we eat’. The type of diets an animal consumes are imprinted on the wear and tear on their teeth and the stable isotope signature in their body tissues. For animals that are no longer alive, studying these signatures in fossil bones and teeth provides a window into the animal’s diet and consequently into how their diets have changed over time with fluctuating climatic and ecological conditions. The project aims to understand how wolves have adapted to changing environments by comparing the diet of past (10 000 to 250 000 years) and present wolves, along with other predators and prey from different locations across Europe.

Examples of subfossil bone material selected from the BGS collections for subsampling. BGS © UKRI.
Top ice age predators
Although they were the first animals to be domesticated by humans, wolves were well-established members of the Pleistocene (ice age) carnivore community in Europe. As one of the top predators, wolves keep the populations of their prey in check and, as a knock-on effect, affect the biodiversity of other predators in the area as well as other animal and plant species further down the food chain by limiting over-predation and over-browsing on vegetation. Wolves are therefore considered the most influential large predator in the northern Eurasia region.
Project aims
Unfortunately, many surviving populations of these charismatic animals are today endangered because of human persecution and environmental change. Serious concerns exist as to the viability of European wolf populations under different scenarios of environmental and climate change. It is therefore essential to understand how wolves have adapted to changing circumstances in the past, so that current and future conservation policy can be appropriately tailored.
The project is being carried out by Dr Angela Lamb and Dr Diksha Bista at BGS, together with Prof Danielle Schreve, Dr Fabienne Pigière and Dr Amanda Burtt (Royal Holloway University London). It will involve museum collections from across the UK.
The collections housed here at BGS were some of the first to be analysed. These collections comprise Quaternary (up to 2.58 million years ago) subfossil bone material that has been held in the museum since the late 1800s. Specimens were collected from Ilford by Richard Payne Cotton and donated in 1877, whilst those from Crayford are from the collection of Frederick Spurrell, donated in 1894.
Although the material was collected over 150 years ago, advancing research technologies allow us to uncover new information that can enhance our understanding of past environments and ecosystems. Even though the subsampling involves removing a small amount of material from the selected bones, the insights gained from the analysis can add significantly to the understanding of the fossils held in the collection since the Victorian era.
Louise Neep, BGS Museum Curator.
Laboratory analysis
In the laboratory, collagen will be extracted from the bones and analysed for nitrogen (N), carbon (C) and sulfur (S) isotopes. Recent technical developments within the Stable Isotope Facility now allow the measurement of these isotopes on a significantly smaller amount of collagen (10 times smaller). This advance means much less sample needs to be removed from the fossils, thus preserving the integrity of precious museum specimens.

Dr Fabienne Pigière sampling the fossil material. BGS © UKRI.
Acknowledgements
We’d like to thank Paul Shepherd (collections manager) and Simon Harris (conservator) for their support with the project.
About the authors

Dr Diksha Bista
Stable isotope research assistant

Dr Angela Lamb
Research scientist

Louise Neep
Curating technician
Relative topics
Latest news

Artificial intelligence is proving a game changer in tracking the Santorini earthquake swarm
07/02/2025
Scientists are harnessing the power of machine learning to help residents and tourists by detecting thousands of seismic events.

Pioneering tool expanding to analyse agricultural pollution and support water-quality interventions
06/02/2025
An online tool that shows which roads are most likely to cause river pollution is being expanded to incorporate methods to assess pollution from agricultural areas.

Vacancy: Chair of the BGS Board
04/02/2025
The Chair of the BGS Board’s role is crucial in guiding BGS and advancing its work in geoscience, ensuring strong governance and delivering public value.

Seabed geology data: results from stakeholder consultation
31/01/2025
BGS collected valuable stakeholder feedback as part of a new Crown Estate-led initiative to improve understanding of national-scale seabed geology requirements.

New Memorandum of Understanding paves the way for more collaborative research in the Philippines
21/01/2025
The partnership will focus on research on multi-hazard preparedness within the country.

New global space weather hazard index launched
17/01/2025
The new index provides a near-real time, global picture of geomagnetic variations helping to highlight the effects of space weather.

Twenty years on: the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami
26/12/2024
Boxing Day 2024 marks 20 years since the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. Prof David Tappin reflects on the disaster and discusses what we have learnt since 2004.

Airlines, shipping companies and sleigh drivers rush to update crucial navigation systems ahead of Christmas rush
17/12/2024
Release of major upgrade to a new model tracking magnetic north prompts global reset of satellite tracking systems across trade and passenger transport routes.

BGS awarded Athena SWAN Silver status
12/12/2024
BGS are delighted to have been awarded Athena SWAN Silver status in recognition of our ongoing commitment to gender equality

BGS makes significant advance in mineral data accessibility
10/12/2024
A new public application programming interface for the BGS World Mineral Statistics Database will revolutionise how users interact with critical data.

Dynamics of land-to-lake transfers in the Lake Victoria Basin
09/12/2024
In June 2024, a UK/Kenya research team shared research findings from a collaborative, four-year field and experimental programme within Kenya.

Prehistoric power: 250-million-year-old rocks could contain secrets to net zero future
05/12/2024
BGS has completed a comprehensive scan of Mercia Mudstone rocks that could hold geological secrets of the UK’s past and provide a boost for net zero.