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Marine food–reliant subsistence systems such as those in the African Middle Stone Age (MSA) were not thought to exist in Europe until the much later Mesolithic. Whether this apparent lag reflects taphonomic biases or behavioral distinctions between archaic and modern humans remains much debated. Figueira Brava cave, in the Arrábida range (Portugal), provides an exceptionally well preserved record of Neandertal coastal resource exploitation on a comparable scale to the MSA and dated to ~86 to 106 thousand years ago. The breadth of the subsistence base—pine nuts, marine invertebrates, fish, marine birds and mammals, tortoises, waterfowl, and hoofed game—exceeds that of regional early Holocene sites. Fisher-hunter-gatherer economies are not the preserve of anatomically modern people; by the Last Interglacial, they were in place across the Old World in the appropriate settings.

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The Late Cretaceous (Campanian-Maastrichtian) fossil site of Lo Hueco was recently discovered close to the village of Fuentes (Cuenca, Spain) during the cutting of a little hill for installation of the railway of the Madrid-Levante high-speed train. To date, it has yielded a rich collection of well-preserved Cretaceous macrofossils, including plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates. The recovered fossil assemblage is mainly composed of plants, molluscs (bivalves and gastropods), actinopterygians and teleosteans fishes, amphibians, panpleurodiran (bothremydids) and pancryptodiran turtles, squamate lizards, eusuchian crocodyliforms, rhabdodontid ornithopods, theropods (mainly dromaeosaurids), and titanosaur sauropods. This assemblage was deposited in a near-coast continental muddy floodplain crossed by distributary sandy channels, exposed intermittently to brackish or marine and freshwater flooding as well as to partial or total desiccation events.

Coastal dune fields and dune-body associated lakes were studied through sedimentological, malacological and palynological analyses. Lake deposits and palaeosoil horizons gave new information about phases of aeolian activity and dune building, coastline and sea level, vegetation history and cultural impact. After a period of intense aeolian activity (Late Pleistocene) that limited soil-forming processes, a wet aeolian field, recorded by podzolized sands and interdune wetland deposits, was present in the region. Around 5000 to 4000 yr BP sea level reached the current level and the coastline was situated c. 1 km further inland compared with the present situation. Subsequently lagoon-barrier island systems developed c. 4000 yr BP. Vegetation in the region during this time was a pine/oak forest. Between 4000 and 1600 yr BP the forest was replaced by a semi-natural heathland. Later the heathland was degraded, allowing dune migration and finally formation of a desert-like landscape. This process was probably a consequence of a combination of deteriorating climate during the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA) and overgrazing. To counteract sand invasion, reforestation efforts were initiated in the region c. 300 years ago and locally along the coastal margin between 1924 and 1940. Formation of the row of freshwater lakes bordering the dune field at present was contemporaneous with the initial reforestation phase. A close relation between lake formation and accumulation of sand dunes was found. Various types of dunes were identified, truncated dunes, parabolic dunes and transverse/oblique dunes. Dune migration caused an eastward displacement of lakes.

At the beginning of the Alpine cycle, the breakup of Pangea lead to the early stages of the North Atlantic opening. In the western Iberian sector of the European margin, the Lusitanian basin starts to evolve bordered eastwards by inherited reliefs from the late episodes of the Variscan orogeny. The base unit, the Silves Group, considered not earlier than the Carnian, is mainly siliciclastic and predominantly formed by arcosarenites to feldspar litarenites, coarse to very coarse-grained (wackes) and pebbly, where the sediment architecture denotes organizations in continental (Conraria, Penela and Castelo Viegas Formations) environments. A first marine episode (Isocyprina Beds of Pereiros Fm.) marks a significant change within the sedimentary record; the uppermost part corresponds to intertidal transitional environments (sabkha). New and detailed field work of sedimentological and structural nature that has been carried out in recent exposures from the type-region of Coimbra-Penela enabled us to make significant observations and to improve data collection. This allowed a full reinterpretation of the paleotectonic and paleogeographical conditions under which the Silves Group and, consequently, the eastern border of the Lusitanian basin, evolved. This study carried out in the type-region also allowed a better understanding of its sequential organization. All units are unconformity bounded by strong influxes of coarse siliciclastics from the Iberian meseta. One of those unconformities (D2b) is an angular unconformity with cartographic expression. Tectonic reconstructions were possible to make after a detailed structural analysis of normal synsedimentary faults. Regional comparisons with Eastern Iberian basins that evolved since Permian times are also discussed. We conclude that the lower red siliciclastic units are older than has been considered until now. Those units were formed in a previous tensional stress pattern of tardi-Variscan affinities, related to megashear dextral kinematics of Permian-Triassic age. We propose that units below D2b unconformity can record a Proto-Lusitanian basin; the Lusitanian basin is younger and evolved mainly after the Triassic-Jurassic limit (Castelo Viegas Fm.) within an E-W extensional context related to Atlantic type basins.

The study of the Bom Santo Cave (central Portugal), a Neolithic cemetery, indicates a complex social, palaeoeconomic, and population scenario. With isotope, aDNA, and provenance analyses of raw materials coupled with stylistic variability of material culture items and palaeogeographical data, light is shed on the territory and social organization of a population dated to 3800-3400 cal BC, i.e. the Middle Neolithic. Results indicate an itinerant farming, segmentary society, where exogamic practices were the norm. Its lifeway may be that of the earliest megalithic builders of the region, but further research is needed to correctly evaluate the degree of this community's participation in such a phenomenon.

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