Un nouveau squelette humain fossile

La Ferrassie 8 Neandertal child reloaded: New remains and re-assessment of the original collection

“…The recovery of two adults, representing a male and a female, and five immature individuals of different ages-at-death provided the potential to explore important paleobiological questions such as those concerning variation, ontogeny, and paleopathology (Heim, 1976(Heim, , 1982a(Heim, , 1982bFennell and Trinkaus, 1977;Balzeau and Rougier, 2013;G omez-Olivencia, 2013G omez-Olivencia, , 2013b. In addition, the two adults have furnished ample and diverse material to the debate on Neandertal burials (Capitan and Peyrony, 1909, 1910, 1911Breuil, 1921;Laville, 2007). Five of the individuals are proposed to have been buried in an intentional pit (Laville, 2007), one of them was covered by a stone (La Ferrassie 4; Capitan and Peyrony, 1912), and one was associated with three stone artefacts (La Ferrassie 5; Capitan and Peyrony, 1920;Peyrony, 1920).…”

“…The discovery of the grand abri dates back to the end of the 19th century when a road was built and exposed part of the sediments of the rockshelter. From 1895 to 1922, Louis Capitan and Denis Peyrony excavated the site, making most of the key paleoanthropological discoveries (e.g., Capitan and Peyrony, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1920. From a historiographic point of view, the discovery of several Neandertal skeletons at this site at the beginning of the 20th century helped to define Neandertals as a distinct species (Boule, 1911e1913).…”

Middle Palaeolithic burial is not a dead issue: the view from Qafzeh, Saint-Césaire, Kebara, Amud, and Dederiyeh

“…In 1989 I examined published claims for purposeful burial at La Chapelle-aux-Saints (Bouyssonie et al, 1908(Bouyssonie et al, , 1913Boule, 1909), Le Moustier (Peyrony, 1930), La Ferrassie (Capitan & Peyrony, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1912a,b, 1921Peyrony, 1934;Heim, 1968), Teshik-Tash (Okladnikov, 1949;Movius, 1953), La Grotte du Régourdou (Bonifay, 1962(Bonifay, , 1964Bonifay & Vandermeersch, 1962), and Shanidar (Solecki, 1955(Solecki, , 1960(Solecki, , 1961(Solecki, , 1963(Solecki, , 1971Solecki & Leroi-Gourhan, 1961;Leroi-Gourhan, 1975). I argued that their preservation was equally well explained by natural deposition (Gargett, 1989a,b).…”

Pluridisciplinary evidence for burial for the La Ferrassie 8 Neandertal child

“…S2) [34][35][36][37] . Most of these skeletons were found at the beginning of the twentieth century [38][39][40][41][42][43] . The last skeleton, La Ferrassie 8 (LF8), a partial Neandertal skeleton (cranium, neck and trunk bones, pelvis and four hand phalanges) of a child of around two-years-old, was found in 1970 and 1973 in layer M2, during the penultimate excavation of the site between 1968 and 1973 28,30,31,43 .…”