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International audience; While the emergence of the Acheulean is well documented in East Africa at ~1.7 Ma, subsequent developments are less well understood and to some extent controversial. Here, we provide robust evidence regarding the time period between 1.6 Ma and 1.2 Ma, based on an interdisciplinary approach to the stratigraphic sequences exposed in the Gombore gully of Melka Kunture, in the upper Awash Valley of Ethiopia. Throughout the Pleistocene, the environment differed significantly from elsewhere in Africa because of the elevation at 2000 m asl, the cooler and rainy climate, the Afromontane vegetation, the development of endemic animal species, and the recurrent impact of volcanic activity. At Gombore IB, dated ~1.6 Ma, remains of Homo erectus/ergaster have been discovered, associated with a rich early Acheulean assemblage. The techno-typological analysis of the lithic record from Gombore Iγ (~1.4 Ma) and Gombore Iδ (~1.3 Ma), where substantial areas have been excavated, and the contrasting evidence from Gombore OAM Test Pit C (~1.2 Ma), suggest that the scarcity or lack of large flakes and large cutting tools at the two earlier sites is possibly not just the outcome of sampling bias, but rather of the adaptation of H. erectus/ergaster to the local resources, in a relatively isolated environment. The sites of Gombore gully provide new evidence on the complex pattern of human evolution and adaptation in East Africa during the Lower Pleistocene.

International audience; Pleistocene archaeology records the changing behaviour and capacities of early hominins. These behavioural changes, for example, to stone tools, are commonly linked to environmental constraints. It has been argued that, in earlier times, multiple activities of everyday life were all uniformly conducted at the same spot. The separation of focused activities across different localities, which indicates a degree of planning, according to this mindset characterizes later hominins since only 500,000 years ago. Simbiro III level C, in the upper Awash valley of Ethiopia, allows us to test this assumption in its assemblage of stone tools made only with obsidian, dated to more than 1.2 million years (Myr) old. Here we first reconstruct the palaeoenvironment, showing that the landscape was seasonally flooded. Following the deposition of an accumulation of obsidian cobbles by a meandering river, hominins began to exploit these in new ways, producing large tools with sharp cutting edges. We show through statistical analysis that this was a focused activity, that very standardized handaxes were produced and that this was a stone-tool workshop. We argue that at Simbiro III, hominins were doing much more than simply reacting to environmental changes; they were taking advantage of new opportunities, and developing new techniques and new skills according to them.

International audience; We describe here the first definite representative of the subfamily Elasmotheriinae in North Africa. It comes from the upper Miocene site of Skoura near Ouarzazate, on the southern slope of the Central High Atlas in Morocco. It consists of a virtually complete skull with articulated mandible and a few fragmentary postcranial remains, making it by far the best known elasmotheriine from the African late Miocene. We assign it to a new taxon, Eoazara xerrii gen. et sp. nov. The skull is characterized by long nasal bones indicating a strong horn and long, anteriorly expanded, edentulous premaxillae. Compared to other Rhinocerotidae, the face is moderately elongated; the lower incisors are of medium size; and the premolar row is short. The upper molars have a strongly pinched protocone, a long antecrochet, and an unexpanded central valley. Eoazara xerrii gen. et sp. nov. is at a lower evolutionary grade than the Chinese species of Ningxiatherium and Parelasmotherium, but probably comparable to the very incomplete remains from the East African late Miocene forms. We regard Eoazara as a member of a chiefly Eurasian clade, rather than as a survivor of a hypothetical African elasmotheriine branch. Parsimony analysis confirms the monophyly of the Elasmotheriinae, but that of the remaining Rhinocerotidae is questionable.

In this paper, we present carbon and oxygen stable isotope analysis of fauna tooth enamel from Garba IVD (~1.95 Ma) and Gombore IB (~1.66 Ma), two Early Acheulean sites of Melka Kunture (Upper Awash, Ethiopia) and discuss faunal taxonomy and fossil pollen. Our aim is to infer the diet, habitat, and environment at both sites and provide a broader paleoecological reconstruction. During the Pleistocene, the vegetation of the highlands of Ethiopia belonged to the “Dry evergreen Afromontane Forest and grassland complex”, distinct from the savanna of lower elevations in East Africa. Our carbon isotopic results indicate that all the analyzed faunal taxa were grazers, consuming C4 grasses, while oxygen isotopic results clearly discriminate the taxa according to their semi-aquatic or terrestrial habitats. These results are consistent with the analysis of the faunal assemblages and the palynological results, suggesting extended mountain grasslands in the landscape at Garba IVD. In contrast, the carbon isotopic results do not totally agree with the pollen paleoenvironmental reconstruction at Gombore IB, where the open vegetation was interrupted by forests and bushy vegetation. Stable isotopes and pollen data provide different outcomes (feeding strategies vs. nearby plants) and have different temporal and spatial resolutions. This is relevant when reconstructing past environments by exclusively using independent proxies. Furthermore, isotopic comparisons with other East African archaeological sites of the Lower Pleistocene age indicate that all the analyzed taxa fed on C4 grasses, and that their dietary strategies were not affected by differences linked to various elevations.

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The onset of the Acheulean, marked by the emergence of large cutting tools (LCTs), is considered a major technological advance in the Early Stone Age and a key turning point in human evolution. The Acheulean originated in East Africa at ~ 1.8–1.6 Ma and is reported in South Africa between ~ 1.6 and > 1.0 Ma. The timing of its appearance and development in North Africa have been poorly known due to the near-absence of well-dated sites in reliable contexts. The ~ 1 Ma stone artefacts of Tighennif (Algeria) and Thomas Quarry I-Unit L (ThI-L) at Casablanca (Morocco) are thus far regarded as documenting the oldest Acheulean in North Africa but whatever the precision of their stratigraphical position, both deserve a better chronology. Here we provide a chronology for ThI-L, based on new magnetostratigraphic and geochemical data. Added to the existing lithostratigraphy of the Casablanca sequence, these results provide the first robust chronostratigraphic framework for the early North African Acheulean and firmly establish its emergence in this part of the continent back at least to ~ 1.3 Ma.

Extant colobine monkeys are specialized leaf eaters. But during the late Miocene, western Eurasia was home to colobines that were less efficient at chewing leaves than they were at breaking seed shells. To understand the link between folivory and granivory in this lineage, the dietary niche of Mesopithecus delsoni and Mesopithecus pentelicus was investigated in southeastern Europe, where a major environmental change occurred during the late Miocene. We combined dental topographic estimates of chewing efficiency with dental microwear texture analysis of enamel wear facets. Mesopithecus delsoni was more efficient at chewing leaves than M. pentelicus, the dental topography of which matches an opportunistic seed eater. Concurrently, microwear complexity increases in M. pentelicus, especially in the northernmost localities corresponding to present-day Bulgaria. This is interpreted as a dietary shift toward hard foods such as seeds or tubers, which is consistent with the savanna and open mixed forest biomes that covered Bulgaria during the Tortonian. The fact that M. delsoni was better adapted to folivory and consumed a lower amount of hard foods than M. pentelicus suggests that colobines either adapted to folivory before their dispersal to Europe or evolved adaptations to leaf consumption in multiple occurrences.

International audience; La succession de paléolittoraux de Casablanca représente une séquence d’une richesse exceptionnelle qui couvre les six derniers millions d’années. La lecture séquentielle des enregistrements, la caractérisation des environnements de dépôts et des données bio et géochronologiques permettentde proposer un cadre chronostratigraphique cohérent qui repose sur l’identification de séquences sédimentaires majeures enregistrant les hauts stationnements marins corrélatifs des grands cycles glacio- eustatiques. La richesse des enregistrements fait de la chronostratigraphie de Casablanca le système de référence du Quaternaire littoral du domaine atlantique marocain et offre un cadre nouveau pour la Préhistoire ancienne régionale.; The Casablanca palaeolittoral succession represents an exceptionally rich sequence covering the last six million years. The sequential reading of the deposits, the characterization of the depositional environments and the biochronological and geochronological data make it possible to propose a coherent chronostratigraphic framework based on the identification of major sedimentary sequences recording the high marine stands correlative of the major glacio-eustatic cycles. The richness of the records makes the Casablanca chronostratigraphy the reference system for the coastal Quaternary ofthe Moroccan Atlantic domain and offers a renewed framework for regional ancient prehistory.

Several hypotheses posit a link between the origin of Homo and climatic and environmental shifts between 3 and 2.5 Ma. Here we report on new results that shed light on the interplay between tectonics, basin migration and faunal change on the one hand and the fate of Australopithecus afarensis and the evolution of Homo on the other. Fieldwork at the new Mille-Logya site in the Afar, Ethiopia, dated to between 2.914 and 2.443 Ma, provides geological evidence for the northeast migration of the Hadar Basin, extending the record of this lacustrine basin to Mille-Logya. We have identified three new fossiliferous units, suggesting in situ faunal change within this interval. While the fauna in the older unit is comparable to that at Hadar and Dikika, the younger units contain species that indicate more open conditions along with remains of Homo. This suggests that Homo either emerged from Australopithecus during this interval or dispersed into the region as part of a fauna adapted to more open habitats., Key events in human evolution are thought to have occurred between 3 and 2.5 Ma, but the fossil record of this period is sparse. Here, Alemseged et al. report a new fossil site from this period, Mille-Logya, Ethiopia, and characterize the geology, basin evolution and fauna, including specimens of Homo.

International audience; The late Miocene locality Hadjidimovo in Southwestern Bulgaria has yielded a huge collection of mammalian fossils, including a complete skull of Machairodus Kaup, 1833, first described (in Bul- garian) by Kovachev (2002). We re-describe it here, compare it with other Machairodus, and review the evolution of the genus. We conclude that the transition from M. aphanistus (Kaup, 1832) to M. giganteus (Wagner, 1848) is gradual and mosaic, that assigning these species to different genera fails to reflect this relationship, and that the Hadjidimovo skull represents a rather late evolutionary stage of this lineage.; Un crâne de Machairodus Kaup, 1833 (Felidae, Mammalia) du Miocène supérieur de Hadjidimovo (Bulgarie), et sa place dans l’évolution du genre.La localité de Hadjidimovo dans le Sud-Ouest de la Bulgarie a livré une énorme collection de mam- mifères fossiles, dont un crâne complet de Machairodus Kaup, 1833, décrit (en Bulgare) par Kovachev (2002). Il est ici re-décrit, et comparé avec les autres Machairodus, genre dont l’évolution est revue. Nous concluons que la transition entre M. aphanistus (Kaup, 1832) et M. giganteus (Wagner, 1848) est graduelle et mosaïque, que de rapporter ces espèces à des genres distincts ne reflète pas cette rela- tion, et que le crâne de Hadjidimovo illustre un stade avancé de cette lignée.

To date, in Africa, evidence for animal processing and consumption in caves routinely used as living spaces is only documented in the late Middle Pleistocene of the North and South of the continent and postdates the Middle Pleistocene in East Africa. Here we report the earliest evidence in a North-African cave (Grotte des Rhinocéros at Casablanca, Morocco) of cut, percussion and human gnawing marks on faunal remains directly associated with lithic knapping activities in the same space and in a well-documented stratified context. Ages for this Acheulean site are provided by the dating of herbivorous teeth to 690–720 ka and 520–550 ka (lower and upper sets) by combined Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) and U-series techniques. Traces of butchery on gazelle, alcelaphin, and zebra bones demonstrate that hominins had primary access to herbivore carcasses. Hominins brought and consumed meat in the cave, as documented by herbivore bones bearing human tooth marks concentrated in a circumscribed area of the excavation. In Africa, this site provides the earliest evidence for in situ carcass processing and meat-eating in cave, directly associated with lithic production and demonstrates the recurrent use by early Middle Pleistocene hominins of a North African cave site 400 000 years before that by Homo sapiens at Jebel Irhoud (Morocco).

International audience; A new compilation of the Old World fossil record of the Camelidae and a recent phylogenetic analysis allow a new assessment of the timing of the diversification in that taxon. Using a recent implementation of the fossilized birth-death process, we show that the divergence between Bactrian camel and dromedary has a peak probability density around 1 Ma and probably occurred less than 2 million years ago. These dates are much younger than molecular estimates, which place the divergence between the dromedary and the Bactrian camel between 4 and 8 million years ago. Calibration problems in molecular dating seems to explain much of this difference.

International audience; The Old World fossil record of the family Camelidae is patchy, but a new partial cranium and some other remains of Camelus grattardi from the Mille-Logya Project area in the Afar, Ethiopia, greatly increase the fossil record of the genus in Africa. These new data – together with analysis of unpublished and recently published material from other sites, and reappraisal of poorly known taxa – allow for a comprehensive phylogenetic analysis showing that C. grattardi is the earliest (2.2–2.9 Ma) and most basal species of the genus. We also show that the lineages leading to the extant taxa C. dromedarius and C. bactrianus diverged much higher in the tree, suggesting a recent age for this divergence. A late divergence date between the extant species is consistent with the absence of any fossil forms that could be ancestral, or closely related, to any of the extant forms before the late Pleistocene, but stands in contrast to molecular estimates which place the divergence between the dromedary and the Bactrian camel between 8 and 4 million years ago.

Melka Kunture est un complexe de sites paléolithiques qui s’étend sur une centaine de km2 dans la vallée supérieure de l’Awash (Éthiopie), entre 2000 et 2200 m d’altitude. Á partir d’il y a 2 millions d’années, il y a de nombreux sites avec productions lithiques de l’Oldowayen, de l’Acheuléen inférieur (Early Acheu lean), de l’Acheuléen moyen et de l’Acheuléen final, et enfin du Middle Stone Age initial (Early Middle Stone Age) et du Middle Stone Age, suivis par le Late Stone Age. Le climat, frais et pluvieux a permis le développement d’une riche végétation de type afromontagnard. Les restes d’hippopotames sont omniprésents et dominent en termes de biomasse, mais les Alcelaphini sont bien représentés, notamment avec les genres Connochaetes et Damaliscus. Des restes fossiles d’homininés ont été découverts en association directe avec l’Oldowayen, l’Acheuléen inférieur, l’Acheuléen moyen et le Middle Stone Age initial. Des empreintes d’animaux et d’homininé s ont également été trouvés, ces dernières dans des niveaux datés entre 1,2 et 0,7 millions d’années.

International audience; This study represents the first extensive systematic investigation of the Miocene mammalian faunas of the Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), stored in the Macedonian Museum of Natural History, Skopje. They range in age from perhaps the early Miocene to the early Ruscinian, but the bulk of the fossils represent middle Turolian mammals. At least 57 taxa have been identified, from 25 different paleontological sites, mostly from the Vardar and Strumitsa river basins, but also from the Morievo and Delchevo regions. The richest localities are the middle Turolian localities of Karaslari (with 22 species) and Kiro Kuchuk (17 species). The rich fossil material greatly improves our knowledge of the Turolian Hipparion faunas of the Balkan-Iranian zoogeographic paleo-province, whose westernmost part was mostly documented in Greece and Bulgaria. The fauna displays the typical faunal features of the Balkan Pikermian biome, with dominance of hipparions (especially H. brachypus, but our revision does not confirm the presence of Hipparion verae in the Turolian faunas) and bovids such as Gazella, Tragoportax, and spiral-horned antelopes. Other forms usually found in the area, such as Microstonyx erymanthius, Dihoplus pikermiensis, chalicotheres, Choerolophodon pentelici, Mesopithecus pentelicus, or Adcrocuta eximia are also common. Several new forms have been identified among the carnivores, the giraffids and the bovids. The Macedonian material contributes to reconstructing the history of several taxa such as Simocyon, Metailurus, several hipparion species, Propotamochoerus, Bohlinia, Sivatherium. The most noticeable features of these Turolian faunas are: the abundance of spiral-horned antelopes, and rarity of antelopes of the Protoryx-Pachytragus group, as in Bulgaria, the co-existence of chalicotheriins and schizotheriins, the frequency of Dihoplus compared to Ceratotherium, the presence of Chilotherium, which reaches its westernmost longitude, and the presence of Anancus sp. in some localities, considered here as post-Pikermian.

International audience; The upper Miocene locality of Mahmutgazi in Western Turkey was excavated in the 70s by a German team, but most of its large mammals had never been studied. The collection housed in the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde, Karlsruhe, contains, besides previously published groups, large samples of Giraffidae (Samotherium), Rhinocerotidae (including a nice complete skull of Ceratotherium neumayri), and Equidae, as well as some Chalicotheriidae (Ancylotherium) and Bovidae (Boselaphini), which are studied here. Three fossiliferous spots, Ma1, Ma2, and Ma3 have been recognized but I regard the first two, and probably also the third one, as contemporaneous. Although the fossil assemblage certainly does not reflect the full original taxonomic diversity, tentative biochronological conclusions can be proposed: the site is probably older than Şerefköy, Akkaşdağı, and the 'Dominant Fossil Assemblage' of Samos, but definitely younger than the early part of the Samos sequence.

International audience; We describe here the Turolian (late Miocene) faunas from several fossiliferous localities at Gorna Sushitsa (South-Western Bulgaria). The composite fauna is typical for the Turolian of the Balkan. The stratigraphically lowermost locality, GS2, yields more primitive stages of Adcrocuta eximia and Paramachaerodus orientalis than at Pikermi, and could be an early Turolian one, very close to the lower/middle Turolian transition. The faunas from stratigraphically higher localities are characteristic of the Middle Turolian and display (especially those from the upper levels), the features of the typical Pikermi fauna. The Gorna Sushitsa faunas indicate a xerophytic open woodland/shrubland at that time.

International audience; We describe a virtually complete proboscidean cranium and other remains from the late Miocene of Skoura near Ouarzazate, Morocco, assigning them to a derived species of Tetralophodon. African finds of this genus are scarce and are of additional interest due to their potential importance for elephantid phylogeny. The Skoura material adds significantly to the African record of non-anancine tetralophodonts and to the Neogene proboscidean record of northwestern Africa.

In the region of Casablanca the development of Quaternary littoral deposits is exceptional, beginning nearly 6 million years ago (Ma) in the Upper Miocene and spreading over the Plio-Quaternary times with an extremely detailed registration of the global climatic cycles. These morpho-sedimentary units yielded an equally extraordinary paleontological and archaeological heritage. In 1961, after approximately 50 years of researches, Pierre Biberson defined a synthetic framework of the Quaternary of Atlantic Morocco and a cultural model that represented the reference for the ancient prehistory of North Africa. Since 1978 however, a joint Morocco-French research program conducted new fieldworks in the Casablanca region, which allowed the stratigraphic and cultural reappraisal of the classical localities and the discovery of new sites. In this paper we review the Early/Middle archaeology and geology of Casablanca from two perspectives: the history of research and the state of the art., En la región de Casablanca, la evolución de los depósitos litorales de la secuencia cuaternaria es exceptional, empezo alrededor de 6 millones de años (Mioceno superior) y se extiende a lo largo de los períodos plio-cuaternarios con un registro detallado de las variaciones de niveles de los océanos testigos de la evolución del clima global. Estas unidades morfo-sedimentarias han conservado un patrimonio paleontólogico y arqueológico extraordinario. En 1961, después de 50 años de investigacións, Pierre Biberson estableció un cuadro estratigráfico del Cuaternario del Marruecos atlantico y definió un esquema cultural que representaba desde entonces la referencia para la prehistória antigua del norte de África.Sin embargo, desde 1978, un programa de investigación arqueológica marroquí-francesa ha llevado a cabo un trabajo de campo en la región de Casablanca que ha permitido la revisión estratigráfica y cultural de los sitios clásicos y el descubrimento de nuevos sitios. En el presente articulo, presentamos la Prehistoria antigua y la geologia de Casablanca segun dos perspectivas: la historia de las investigaciónes y el estado de arte., Dans la région de Casablanca, le développement des dépôts littoraux de la séquence quaternaire est exceptionnel, il commence aux environs de 6 millions d’années (Miocène supérieur) et s’étend tout le long des périodes plio-quaternaires avec un enregistrement détaillé des variations des niveaux des océans témoins de l’évolution du climat planétaire. Ces unités morpho-sédimentaires ont conservé un patrimoine paléontologique et archéologique extraordinaire. En 1961, après à peu près 50 ans de recherches, Pierre Biberson établit un cadre stratigraphique du Quaternaire du Maroc atlantique et définit un schéma culturel qui représenta dès lors la référence pour la Préhistoire ancienne nord-africaine. Cependant, depuis1978, un programme de recherches archéologiques maroco-français a conduit des travaux de terrain dans la région de Casablanca ayant permis la révision stratigraphique et culturelle des sites classiques et la découverte de nouveaux sites. Dans le présent article, nous présentons la Préhistoire ancienne et la géologie de Casablanca selon deux perspectives: l’historique des recherches et l’état de l’art.

International audience; AbstractThe rise and spread of tropical grasslands was a signal event in the Cenozoic, causing many ungulates to evolve adaptations to a diet of graminoid tissues, or graminivory. In parallel, a lineage of monkeys (Theropithecus) is distinguished among primates for its large size and commitment to graminivory, a trait expressed by species throughout the Plio-Pleistocene fossil record and T. gelada, the sole surviving species today. An open question concerns the mechanics of how fossil species of Theropithecus handled graminoid tissues. They might have exhibited preference, selecting tissues within a given tuft, or they might have practiced indiscriminate bulk-feeding in a manner similar to large grazing ungulates. To differentiate between these handling behaviors, we used time- and graminivore-calibrated carbon stable isotope values to show progressive reliance on high-throughput bulk-feeding graminivory. Variation in this behavior explains a significant amount of variation in body mass through time, and we describe these covarying traits, which peaked during the Pleistocene, as evolutionary traps. To support this characterization, we report evidence of temporal increases in strontium isotope variability among North African theropiths, a result that suggests greater lifetime travel and energetic costs in response to diminishing food resources, a probable factor in the extinction of T. oswaldi, the largest monkey that ever lived.

Most Plio-Pleistocene sites in the Gregory Rift Valley that have yielded abundant fossil hominins lie on the Rift Valley floor. Here we report a new Pliocene site, Kantis, on the shoulder of the Gregory Rift Valley, which extends the geographical range of Australopithecus afarensis to the highlands of Kenya. This species, known from sites in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and possibly Kenya, is believed to be adapted to a wide spectrum of habitats, from open grassland to woodland. The Kantis fauna is generally similar to that reported from other contemporaneous A. afarensis sites on the Rift Valley floor. However, its faunal composition and stable carbon isotopic data from dental enamel suggest a stronger C4 environment than that present at those sites. Although the Gregory Rift Valley has been the focus of paleontologists' attention for many years, surveys of the Rift shoulder may provide new perspective on African Pliocene mammal and hominin evolution, ケニア・ナイロビ郊外で初めて発見されたアウストラロピテクス. 京都大学プレスりリス. 2016-03-24.

International audience; The whole collection of Suidae from Kanapoi is revised in the context of the systematics and evolution of Nyanzachoerus in the Pliocene of Eastern Africa. It contains only two species, Nyanzachoerus kanamensis and Notochoerus jaegeri. The size and morphology of their premolars overlap, but not those of their m3s. No transitional form between them is known in Kenya, but some populations from Uganda and Ethiopia display intermediate characters, suggesting that No. jaegeri could be descended from a kanamensis-like ancestor. However, the cranial remains of No. jaegeri from Kanapoi are insufficient to formally establish the affinities of the species. On the basis of the dentition, Notochoerus euilus could be descended from No. jaegeri. The noticeable absence of Kolpochoerus at Kanapoi (and in the whole Turkana Basin at that time) remains unexplained. The presence of a species with affinity to Nyanzachoerus tulotos at Ekora raises the possibility that uppermost Miocene sediments occur there.

International audience; We describe here several specimens of the genus Theropithecus from the southern shore of Lake Assal in the Republic of Djibouti; they are the first record of the genus from this country. We assign them to a derived stage of T. oswaldi. This identification has implications for the age of the informal ‘Formation 1’ from this area, which should probably be assigned to the Middle Pleistocene. In addition, the presence of T. oswaldi close to the Bab el Mandeb Strait strongly suggests that the species followed this route to India, rather than a more northern one.

International audience; Today, the family Giraffidae is restricted to two genera endemic to the African continent, Okapia and Giraffa, but, with over ten genera and dozens of species, it was far more diverse in the Old World during the late Miocene. We attempt to describe here how several species may have shared feeding resources in the Eastern Mediterranean. Dietary preferences were explored by means of Dental Microwear Textural Analysis in combination with estimation of body mass and the maximum height at which the various species were able to browse. One of our main results concerns the modern okapi, Okapia johnstoni. It is a forest dweller usually regarded as a browser, but we show that it might also forage on tough plants, possibly herbaceous monocots. Such feeding habits including portions of herbaceous monocotyledons were also found for some extinct species, especially the genera Samotherium and Palaeotragus. Palaeogiraffa shows a contrasted pattern the specimens of P. pamiri from a site in Thrace were leaf-dominant browsers whereas those belonging to P. major and P. macedoniae from the Axios valley in Greece ingested herbaceous monocotyledons. Helladotherium duvernoyi, the only sivatheriine analyzed here is described as a leaf-dominant browser. The giraffine Bohlinia attica also falls within the leaf-dominant browser category but could browse on higher foliages than H. duvernoyi. On the whole, the reconstructed diets confirm the relationship between more grazing habits and smaller premolars, but not with higher dental crown height.

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International audience; We describe the oldest known European ruminant, Bachitherium thraciensis sp. nov., from late Eocene (latest Bartonian or early Priabonian) strata in Bulgaria. The new specimen, which possesses the most primitive dental morphology known in the Bachitheriidae family, predates its western European relatives by at least 4.5 Myr. The discovery suggests that ruminants dispersed into Europe in a series of east to west waves, preceding and following the Eocene–Oligocene boundary. Probably originating from Asia, the oldest ruminant (reported here) migrated into southeastern Europe. During a second wave, comprising the Grand Coupure dispersal event, ruminants moved into western Europe at the Eocene–Oligocene boundary. A third wave composed by Bachitheriidae and Tragulidae arrived in western Europe, 2 Myr later, in the earliest Oligocene. The origin of this east to west diachronism was probably facilitated by orogenesis that, episodically, allowed dispersal of ruminants from Asia, through southeastern Europe, and into western Europe, in what we herein term the “Bachitherium dispersal event”. However, none of the abundant perissodactyl fauna from southeastern Europe migrated to western Europe during this time, because, like their relatives in central Asia, they may not survive to terminal Eocene cooling and aridity.

International audience; We describe here the whole collection of Camelus thomasiPomel, 1893 from the Pleistocene type-locality Tighennif (Ternifine) in Algeria. Detailed morphological and metric comparisons with the two species of modern CamelusLinnaeus, 1758, C. bactrianusLinnaeus, 1758 and C. dromedariusLinnaeus, 1758, show that it is clearly distinct from both of them. It is mainly characterized by pachyostosis especially marked in the mandible, a size slightly greater than modern forms, broad molars with strong styles, and several unique cranial features. The species seems restricted to the terminal Early Pleistocene and is not definitely known outside Northwestern Africa. A phylogenetic analysis is premature, but C. thomasi does not appear to be particularly close to either modern species, and there is no support to regard it as an ancestor of the dromedary.

International audience; The Early Pleistocene transition from the Oldowan to the Acheulean in eastern Africa was roughly contemporaneous with a number of other events commonly assumed to be connected with hominin evolution. I review here the large mammal evidence, well-documented in several major eastern African sites. Definite conclusions are hard to reach because of temporal gaps in the fossil record, and very patchy history of many lineages, but I conclude that, although some groups do show some turnover during this period, most of them did not change more than before or after it. We may conclude that this cultural change did not seriously impact the faunal assemblage. In addition, we may surmise that, since climate change at this period, if any, did not seriously impact the fauna, it is unlikely to have played a major role in human evolution at that time.

Understanding patterns of human evolution across space and time requires synthesizing data collected by independent research teams, and this effort is part of a larger trend to develop cyber infrastructure and e-science initiatives. At present, paleoanthropology cannot easily answer basic questions about the total number of fossils and artifacts that have been discovered, or exactly how those items were collected. In this paper, we examine the methodological challenges to data integration, with the hope that mitigating the technical obstacles will further promote data sharing. At a minimum, data integration efforts must document what data exist and how the data were collected (discovery), after which we can begin standardizing data collection practices with the aim of achieving combined analyses (synthesis). This paper outlines a digital data collection system for paleoanthropology. We review the relevant data management principles for a general audience and supplement this with technical details drawn from over 15 years of paleontological and archeological field experience in Africa and Europe. The system outlined here emphasizes free open-source software (FOSS) solutions that work on multiple computer platforms; it builds on recent advances in open-source geospatial software and mobile computing.

A well-preserved distal portion of a left humerus was discovered in 1976 during excavations directed by J. Chavaillon at the Gombore I site, in the Melka Kunture area (Ethiopia). The specimen, labelled Gombore IB-7594 (formally Melka Kunture 3, or MK3), was found in situ within unit 2 of level B, which is dated to >1.39 Ma and includes a rich Oldowan Paleolithic assemblage. Although MK3 has never been described in detail, it appeared in the literature several times and, from a taxonomic point of view, has been alternatively regarded as Homo , Australopithecus or Paranthropus . According to our analysis, MK3 exhibits a suite of features that fit the variability of the genus Homo and does not display any clear Australopithecus/Paranthropus affinity. Nevertheless, MK3 adds a great deal of variability to the genus Homo , at least as far as the Early Pleistocene fossil record is concerned. In particular, our quantitative approach, which combines traditional morphometric analyses and geometric morphometrics, highlights traits that are uncommon among the Plio-Pleistocene fossil record, while affinities with Mid-to-Late Pleistocene representatives of Homo are observed. In addition, the large size of MK3 suggests that this humerus belonged to an individual whose body weight approached 90 kg, far from the range of body size known for Homo representatives in the Early Pleistocene and as big as those of extant humans or even gorillas. We suggest that such peculiar features are of interest when regarded from an ecological perspective; thus, dimension and morphology of MK3 may be considered as an exaptation that became useful when early humans dispersed to high altitudes such as those of the upper Awash basin on the Ethiopian plateau, at heights above 2000 m.