Arid, mosaic environments during the Plio-Pleistocene transition and early hominin dispersals in northern Africa

The earliest archaeological evidence from northern Africa dates to ca. 2.44 Ma. Nevertheless, the palaeoenvironmental setting of hominins living in this part of the continent at the Plio-Pleistocene transition remains poorly documented, particularly in comparison to eastern and southern Africa. The...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Ramírez-Pedraza, Iván|||0000-0001-8673-212X, Tornero Dacasa, Carlos Alberto|||0000-0002-2870-8989, Aouraghe, Hassan, Rivals, Florent|||0000-0001-8074-9254, Patalano, Robert|||0000-0002-9075-4556, Haddoumi, Hamid, Expósito Barea, Isabel|||0000-0002-2084-5487, Rodríguez-Hidalgo, Antonio|||0000-0002-5449-9287, Mischke, Steffen|||0000-0003-3821-8497, van der Made, Jan|||0000-0002-4807-4338, Piñero, Pedro|||0000-0002-5626-2777, Blain, Hugues-Alexandre|||0000-0002-9920-2707, Roberts, Patrick|||0000-0002-4403-7548, Kumar Jha, Deepak, Agustí, Jordi|||0000-0002-7240-1992, Sánchez Bandera, Christian|||0000-0002-7877-3332, Lemjidi, Abdelkhalek, Benito-Calvo, Alfonso|||0000-0002-6363-1753, Moreno-Ribas, Elena|||0000-0002-0947-6457, Oujaa, Aïcha, Mhamdi, Hicham, Souhir, Mohamed|||0000-0001-7558-3077, Aissa, Al Mahdi, Chacón, M. Gema|||0000-0002-5612-6126, Sala-Ramos, Robert|||0000-0002-7168-824X
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2024
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:319971
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/319971
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1038/s41467-024-52672-0
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Palaeoecology
Palaeoclimate
Archaeology
Palaeontology
Descripción
Sumario:The earliest archaeological evidence from northern Africa dates to ca. 2.44 Ma. Nevertheless, the palaeoenvironmental setting of hominins living in this part of the continent at the Plio-Pleistocene transition remains poorly documented, particularly in comparison to eastern and southern Africa. The Guefaït-4 fossil site in eastern Morocco sheds light on our knowledge of palaeoenvironments in northern Africa. Our study reveals the oldest known presence of C plants in the northern part of the continent in a mosaic landscape that includes open grasslands, forested areas, wetlands, and seasonal aridity. This diverse landscape and resource availability likely facilitated the occupation of the region by mammals, including potentially hominins. Our regional-scale study provides a complementary perspective to global-scale studies and highlights the importance of considering the diversity of microhabitats within a given region when studying species-dispersal dynamics. The palaeoenvironmental context for early hominins in northern Africa during the Plio-Pleistocene transition is poorly documented. Here, the authors present multiproxy palaeoecological evidence for heterogeneous open grasslands, forested areas, wetlands, and seasonal aridity from Guefaït-4.2 in Morocco.

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