I am attempting to estimate the body mass of wolves using measurements from their mandibles as described by Losey et al. (2012). In this paper, the authors describe a regression equation that can be used to estimate an organism's overall body mass using measurements from the mandible. Depending on how complete the mandible is, the authors gave their top suggestions for the most dependable regions to measure for a reliable body mass estimate. Each estimate and therefore use of the regression equation involves measuring just one region of the mandible (although you could measure different regions to get different estimates). In doing this, I have found that each of the regions I measure give me slightly different body weight estimates for the same animal (in some cases ranging up to 20 kg). To get as close as possible to the real estimate, I am wondering whether it would be valid to measure several different areas of the mandible, use those values in the regression equation, and then take the mean of each of those values to use as my body weight estimate. If anyone has any thoughts on this please let me know! I appreciate your help!  

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