Pliocene to Middle Pleistocene climate history in the Guadix-Baza Basin, and the environmental conditions of early Homo dispersal in Europe

Saarinen, Juha; Oksanen, Otto; Žliobaitė, Indrė; DeMiguel, Daniel; Azanza, Béatriz; Bocherens, Hervé; Luzón, Carmen; Solano, José Antonio García; Yravedra, José; Courtenay, Lloyd A.; Blain, Hugues‐Alexandre; Sánchez‐Bandera, Christian; Serrano‐Ramos, Alexia; Rodríguez‐Alba, Juan José; Viranta, Suvi; Barsky, Déborah; Tallavaara, Miikka; Oms, Oriol; Agustı́, Jordi; Ochando, Juan; Carrión, José S.; Jiménez‐Arenas, Juan Manuel

doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.107132

Cited by 32 publications

(30 citation statements)

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“…Equus suessenbornensis was a very large-sized and robust species, comparable in size to the earlier Pleistocene Western European Equus major (with mean body mass within paleopopulations ranging from over 500 kg to slightly over 600 kg). Similar to other very large species of Equus , E. suessenbornensis typically had mixed to even browsing diets [ 19 , 374 ] ( Tables S2 and S3 ), and although being widespread in Europe, it was typically less abundant than the small E. altidens , also where these two co-occurred. Equus altidens was the earliest identified hemionine and it shares interesting similarities in mesowear signal to extant hemionines.…”

Section: Paleoecologymentioning

confidence: 70%

Evolution of the Family Equidae, Subfamily Equinae, in North, Central and South America, Eurasia and Africa during the Plio-Pleistocene

Cirilli

Machado

Arroyo-Cabrales

et al. 2022

Biology

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Studies of horse evolution arose during the middle of the 19th century, and several hypotheses have been proposed for their taxonomy, paleobiogeography, paleoecology and evolution. The present contribution represents a collaboration of 19 multinational experts with the goal of providing an updated summary of Pliocene and Pleistocene North, Central and South American, Eurasian and African horses. At the present time, we recognize 114 valid species across these continents, plus 4 North African species in need of further investigation. Our biochronology and biogeography sections integrate Equinae taxonomic records with their chronologic and geographic ranges recognizing regional biochronologic frameworks. The paleoecology section provides insights into paleobotany and diet utilizing both the mesowear and light microscopic methods, along with calculation of body masses. We provide a temporal sequence of maps that render paleoclimatic conditions across these continents integrated with Equinae occurrences. These records reveal a succession of extinctions of primitive lineages and the rise and diversification of more modern taxa. Two recent morphological-based cladistic analyses are presented here as competing hypotheses, with reference to molecular-based phylogenies. Our contribution represents a state-of-the art understanding of Plio-Pleistocene Equus evolution, their biochronologic and biogeographic background and paleoecological and paleoclimatic contexts.

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Section: Paleoecologymentioning

confidence: 70%

Evolution of the Family Equidae, Subfamily Equinae, in North, Central and South America, Eurasia and Africa during the Plio-Pleistocene

Cirilli

Machado

Arroyo-Cabrales

et al. 2022

Biology

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“…These co-occurring assemblages are both characterised by a low incidence of weathering alterations, which implies two possible interpretations: (1) that only a short timespan had elapsed between the first natural accumulation and the traces of hominin behaviour at the site recorded in the primary-position deposit, suggesting rapid burial; (2) that bones were on a relatively humid substrate, with vegetation providing shelter from subaerial exposure, particularly sun radiation, and sudden changes in temperature and humidity, thus delaying bone weathering trends (Andrews and Whybrow, 2005;Fernández-Jalvo and Andrews, 2016). This second interpretation is not implausible, given how the BL palaeoenvironmental data suggests a humid and wooded biotope (Sánchez-Bandera et al, 2020;Saarinen et al, 2021). Moreover the presence among herpetofauna of a treefrog (Hyla sp.)…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Palaeoecological analyses based on microfauna and tooth wear patterns indicate a predominance of Mediterranean woodland and open environments in the basin during much of the Early Pleistocene (e.g. Agustí et al, 2010;Blain et al, 2011;Sánchez-Bandera et al 2020;Saarinen et al 2021). Recent herpetofaunal studies (Sánchez-Bandera et al, 2020) show a tendency towards more arid conditions from BL-D1 to level E. The BL-D1 and BL-D2 depositional events took place in the context of a humid and wooded biotope.…”

Section: The Site Of Barranco Leónmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From a palaeoecological perspective, a wide range of species from many different ecological settings are represented at BL-D1. While species associated with open environments, such as equids and rhinoceroses, predominate, cervids -generally linked to more wooded environments -are also well represented (Saarinen et al, 2021). Species that favour watercourses and wetland environments, such as hippopotami and turtles, are common, with taxa associated with upland areas or rocky settings such as Capra alba also being present.…”

Section: Zooarchaeological Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Unravelling Hominin Activities in the Zooarchaeological Assemblage of Barranco León (Orce, Granada, Spain)

et al. 2022

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Little is known about the subsistence practices of the first European settlers, mainly due to the shortage of archaeological sites in Europe older than a million years. This article contributes to the knowledge of the subsistence of the first Europeans with new zooarchaeology and taphonomic data from the Palaeolithic site of Barranco León (Orce, Granada, Spain). We present the results of the analysis of the faunal assemblages retrieved in the context of new excavations undertaken between 2016 and 2020. We have followed a standard methodology for the identification and quantification of species, mortality profiles, skeletal representation and taphonomic analysis. With regard to the taphonomic evidence, we have documented the extent of rounding, abrasion and other alterations. Finally, we examined traces from the activities of carnivores and hominins that led to the accumulation and alteration of the bone assemblages. Results indicate that the archaeo-paleontological deposits from Barranco León present a dual-patterned mixed taphonomic origin. The first phase primarily involved waterborne processes (BL-D1), which led to the accumulation of lithic raw materials, a few archaeological stone tools, and some faunal remains with percussion and cutmarks. The second phase (BL-D2) contains several stone tools associated with faunal remains with more anthropogenic alterations, such as cutmarks and percussion marks. After analysing the Barranco León zooarchaeological assemblage, the present study concludes that hominins had access to the meat and within-bone nutrients of animals of diverse sizes. However, the specific carcass acquisition mechanisms that hominins followed are less certain because the presence of tooth marks suggests that carnivores also played a role in the accumulation and modification of the Barranco León faunal assemblage.

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“…To the best of our knowledge, no joint species distribution models, which would consider the distribution of multiple species along with their environmental contexts, have yet been reported for the fossil record. Recently, we attempted an ecometric species distribution modelling of early humans using functional traits of fossil mammals (Saarinen et al, 2021), which is yet another direction close to the traditional species distribution modelling. While not explicitly modelling species distribution or relative abundances.…”

Section: The Proposed Recommender Systems Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recommender systems for fossil community distribution modelling

Žliobaitė

2022

Methods Ecol Evol

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We propose to leverage recommender systems from machine learning to build large‐scale community distribution models for the mammalian fossil record. Recommender systems are behind most online life today, from shopping to news personalisation, online dating, or the selection of study programmes or fastest routes. Many recommender systems work by predicting user preferences from items that occur together in user profiles. Technically, this setting closely resembles co‐occurrence of species in natural environments. Here we frame community distribution modelling as a recommender systems task, tailor existing recommender techniques for this purpose and propose optimisation criteria for fitting the models in the ecological context. The predictive power comes from species co‐occurrences. We demonstrate the potential of this approach for analysing past ecosystems on a case study of Miocene fossil sites in Europe, where we use the proposed community distribution modelling for reconstructing companionships and relative abundances of large mammals. The proposed approach to community distribution modelling, although not climatically explicit, can help to reconstruct past ecosystems and analyse their structure and dynamics over time and space. It also allows, even coarsely, to predict relative abundances of fossil species from presence–absence data. More generally, the proposed perspective is a means for analysis of fossil communities and the relationships between their ecological contexts.

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Pliocene to Middle Pleistocene climate history in the Guadix-Baza Basin, and the environmental conditions of early Homo dispersal in Europe

Cited by 32 publications

References 56 publications

Evolution of the Family Equidae, Subfamily Equinae, in North, Central and South America, Eurasia and Africa during the Plio-Pleistocene

Evolution of the Family Equidae, Subfamily Equinae, in North, Central and South America, Eurasia and Africa during the Plio-Pleistocene

Unravelling Hominin Activities in the Zooarchaeological Assemblage of Barranco León (Orce, Granada, Spain)

Recommender systems for fossil community distribution modelling

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