Hi all. I'm in the final stages of my masters degree in palaeontology and have a slight conundrum. I've been counting otoliths (calcitic stones found in the ears of fish) versus pieces of bone material in various horizons of the Oxford Clay.

As any one fish only has two otoliths- one left and one right (which are easily identifiable and separable), I've been using the largest number of either to give a minimum number of fish present in the sample. I was about to work out the ratio of pieces of bone/minimum number of fish but ran into a slightly problem with a couple of horizons.

My first two horizons yielded no otoliths- so I would be dividing by 0. I've asked my supervisor if I should call it 1 because I found pieces of bone and teeth that are definitely from fish that would produce otoliths but he says he's not sure. Would it be normal to just leave these squares of my table as N/A as I'd be dividing by 0? Or what else would you suggest I try?