Geology and palaeontology of the Upper Miocene Toros-Menalla hominid locality, Chad

Abstract

All six known specimens of the early hominid Sahelanthropus tchadensis come from Toros-Menalla site 266 (TM 266), a single locality in the Djurab Desert, northern Chad, central Africa. Here we present a preliminary analysis of the palaeontological and palaeoecological context of these finds. The rich fauna from TM 266 includes a significant aquatic component such as fish, crocodiles and amphibious mammals, alongside animals associated with gallery forest and savannah, such as primates, rodents, elephants, equids and bovids. The fauna suggests a biochronological age between 6 and 7 million years. Taken together with the sedimentological evidence, the fauna suggests that S. tchadensis lived close to a lake, but not far from a sandy desert, perhaps the oldest record of desert conditions in the Neogene of northern central Africa.

Taphonomic analysis of skeletal remains from chimpanzee hunts at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda

“…Finally, pre-technological hominins were similar in body size to modem chimpanzees (McHenry, 1992), lived in more closed environments than later hominins (WoldeGabriel et al, 1994;Pickford and Senut, 2001;WoldeGabriel et al, 2001;Vignaud, et al, 2002), and may have retained some tree-climbing adaptations (Richmond, 1998;Hailie-Selassie, 2001;Senut et al, 2001;Ward, 2002). We suggest that if pre-stone toolusing Pliocene hominins hunted and consumed small sized prey, the taphonomic signature of that hunting behavior would be more similar to chimpanzee consumption of small prey than Oldowan hominin stone tool-assisted butchery of larger prey.…”

“…This archaeological evidence is penecontemporaneous with the origin of the genus Homo at 2.3 Ma (Kimbel et al, 1996). However, most molecular estimates (Kumar and Hedges, 1998;Stauffer et al, 2001) and fossil evidence (Hailie-Selassie, 2001;Senut et al, 2001;Brunet et al, 2002) suggest that the hominin and chimpanzee lineages diverged at least six to eight million years ago. Therefore, there is considerable time during which the human lineage potentially was practicing some degree of pre-stone tool carnivory that may be difficult to detect in the archaeological record.…”

“…The two earliest hominin sites•the Sahelathropus tchadensis site of Toros-Menalla, Chad (at about 6•7 Ma), and the Orrorin tugenensis site of Kapsomin, Tugen Hills, Kenya (at about 6 Ma)•included gallery forest components, and fossil evidence for the presence of colobus monkeys has been found at these sites Vignaud, et al, 2002). The colobine remains from Toros-Menalla is a single damaged maxilla , but the faunal assemblage from Kapsomin is dominated by small to medium ruminants and colobine monkeys that Pickford and Senut (2001) interpret to be the prey remains of a leopard-like cat.…”

A multidisciplinary reconstruction of Palaeolithic nutrition that holds promise for the prevention and treatment of diseases of civilisation

“…The widespread dispersal of some of the earliest hominins such as Sahelanthropus (65,152) , and Australopithecus bahrelghazali from Chad, might be explained by the presence of the relatively low-lying humid EastWest corridor constituted by the remnants of the Cretaceous Central African and Sudan Rifts between Western and Eastern Africa (153,154) . The reconstructed environment of Sahelanthropus (about 7 Mya) suggests a mosaic of gallery forest at the edge of a deep, well-oxygenated lake, swampy and vegetated areas, and extensive grasslands (155) .…”

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“…Los descubrimientos recientes de Orrorin tugenensis, y su dato cronológico Senut et al, 2001) y el de Sahelanthropus thechadiensis (Vignaud et al, 2002) han confirmado este evento evolutivo, también inseparable del escenario de la Crisis Messiniense.…”