Benoit, JulienLegendre, LucasFarke, AndrewNeenan, James MMennecart, BastienCosteur, LoicMerigeaud, SamuelManger, Paul2020-10-202020-10-202020-07-07Benoit, J., Legendre, L., Costeur, L., Farke, A., Mennecart, B., Neenan, J. M., & Manger, P. (2020, July 7). Dataset from : The lateral semicircular canal and head posture in “ungulate” mammals: implications on diet, behaviour and paleobiological reconstructions. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/4VPNJ Link for Peer Review. https://osf.io/4vpnj/?view_only=3dc987012fcd44a6a64ad7d8949ec01fhttps://hdl.handle.net/10539/29886Data is open access but is raw and cannot be guaranteed to produce the same results unless the detailed methodology is followed and the researchers consulted for the know how involved in the project. Photos not available for public use beyond peer review because of potential privacy issues. The data is not guaranteed to be clean.For over a century, it has been assumed that the plane of the lateral semicircular canal of the inner ear is parallel to the earth horizontal when the head is at rest. This has long been used by paleontologists to reconstruct head posture in extinct species. Thought this hypothesis has been repeatedly questioned, it has never been tested on a large sample size and at a broad taxonomic scale in mammals. This study presents a comprehensive test of this hypothesis in more than a hundred “ungulate” species. Using CT scanning and manual segmentation, the orientation of the skull was reconstructed as if the lateral semicircular canal of the bony labyrinth was aligned with the earth's horizontal plane. This reconstructed cranial orientation was statistically compared to the actual head posture of the corresponding animals using a dataset of 10,000 photographs and phylogenetic regressions. A statistically significant correlation between the reconstructed cranial orientation and head posture is found, although the plane of the lateral semicircular canal significantly departs from the earth's horizontal plane. We thus caution against the use of the lateral semicircular canal as a proxy to infer the horizontal plane on dry skulls and in extinct species. Diet (browsing or grazing) and head-butting behavior are significantly correlated to the orientation of the lateral semicircular canal, but not to the actual head posture. Head posture and the orientation of the lateral semicircular canal are both strongly predetermined by phylogenyenThis dataset details the images and scans which underlying the conclusion presented in this paper. The dataset represents about 10,000 pictures documenting the head posture of 129 species from various zoos:SANBI National Zoological Garden, Pretoria (Tracy Rehse), Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo (Dr. Arnold Kanengoni), Montecasino Bird Garden (Elaine Bratt), Lory Park Animal and Owl Sanctuary, Midrand (Kara Heynis), Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes et Parc Zoologique de Paris, CNRS (Dr. Michel Saint-Jalme and Dr. Alexis Lécu) with the participation of the National Museum of Natural History- France, Prague Zoo (Schneiderová Irena), Conservation and Science, North of England Zoological Society (Chester Zoo), Dr. Tobias Rahde (Zoologischer Garten Berlin), Tierpark Berlin (Dr. Florian Sicks), Zooparc de Beauval, Kölner Zoo (K.H. Vogel for the pictures of the saïga and Alexander Sliwa). A total of 285 medical quality CT-scans representing 118 species mostly from the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), Ditsong Museum (AZ and TM), Evolutionary Studies Institute of the University of the Witwatersrand (BP), Wits Life Science Museum (WLSM), School of Anatomical Science of the University of the Witwatersrand (MS and ZA), Natural History Museum of Basel (NMB) and Zoological Museum of the University of Zurich (ZM)phylogeny.,Dataset