Figure 2

Relative ranking of species and order by peptides identified in five WWII disks. (A) ranks the disks by orders. The percent of spectra below the dotted lines represent peptides shared between all orders in a given disk. (B)–(F) X-axes identify all peptides found in a particular disk as well as the number of times that peptide was independently detected. (Sequences for (F) may be found in Supplementary Table 3) Y-axes indicates possible species assignments using different combinations of the identified peptides. Percentages reflect the number of peptides used for a species assignment as a total of all peptides identified (only species that explained > 50% of the data are shown). Only in the North Carolina disk (B) is human the most likely species interpretation (65% of peptide, tied with polar bear*). The only other disk with human specific peptides is Yad Vashem disk 5910 where human represents the third largest number of peptides (60%, again tied with polar bear), while sheep/goat (93%) and cow/deer (87%) are higher. *Identification of non-European wildlife, e.g. polar bear, Virginia white-tailed deer, alpaca, etc. are likely due to limitations of databases for the European species of these genera. For example, both polar bears (Ursus maritimus) and Eurasian brown bears (Ursus arctos arctos) are of the same genus.