A new Late Pleistocene non-anthropogenic vertebrate assemblage from the northern Iberian Peninsula: Artazu VII (Arrasate, Basque Country)

Abstract

Late Pleistocene palaeontological sites without human intervention are limited in the Cantabrian region, and even more so those with a good state of preservation and rich biodiversity. A new vertebrate fossiliferaus locality discovered at Kobate Quarry (Arrasate, northern Iberian Peninsula) is presented in this article. This site, in which remains of 40 different vertebrate taxa were accumulated, acted as a natural trap. The preliminary vertebrate faunallist includes five amphibian taxa, four reptiles, seven species of birds and 24 mammalian taxa. While small mammals are represented by 13 small mammal taxa (seven in the Order Rodentia, five in the Order Eulipotyphla, and one in the Order Chiraptera), the large mammal fauna comprises eleven species, including ungulates and carnivores. The palaeoecology inferred fram this faunal assemblage suggests the existence oflarge forested areas with sorne grassland and a watercourse nearby, within a notably warm and humid climate. These palaeoenviranmental conditions, combined with AMS and AAR results carried out in macrafaunal bone samples, suggest that the deposit fram Artazu VII would be located in the first half of the Late Pleistocene, in the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) Se. RÉSUMÉLes gisements paléontologiques de la fin du Pléistocene sont limités dans la région Cantabrique, et encore plus limités sont les sites ayant fourni des restes osseux en bon état de conservation et montrant une grande biodiversité. Nous présentons ici un nouveau site trouvé dans la carrü:'>re de Kobate (Arrasate, Nord de la péninsule Ibérique

Los micromamíferos (Eulipotyphla, Chiroptera, Rodentia y Lagomorpha) del yacimiento del Pleistoceno Superior de la cueva de El Castillo (Cantabria, España)

“…coronatus-araneus o bien S. araneuscoronatus (denominaciones que implícitamente indican la dificultad de distinguir morfológicamente ambas especies) en muchos yacimientos del Pleistoceno Superior y Holoceno como Gorham (Gibraltar) (López-García et al, 2011b), El Portalón (Atapuerca, Burgos) , Unidad Faunística 7 de Atapuerca (Burgos) (Cuenca-Bescós et al, 2010a), El Mirón (Cantabria) (Cuenca-Bescós et al, 2008), Laminak II (Vizcaya) (Pemán, 1994), Askondo (Vizcaya) (Garcia-Ibaibarriaga et al, 2015a), Arlanpe (Vizcaya) (Garcia-Ibaibarriaga et al, 2013a), Arenaza I (Vizcaya) (Ordiales et al, 2015), Lezetxiki II (Guipúzcoa) (GarciaIbaibarriaga et al, 2015b), Aizkoltxo (Guipúzcoa) (Murelaga et al, 2008), Kiputz (Guipúzcoa) (Garcia-Ibaibarriaga et al, 2013b), Aratzu VII (Guipúzcoa) (Suárez-Bilbao et al, 2016), Peña Larga (Álava) (Rofes et al, 2013), La Arbreda (Gerona) (López-García et al, 2015), Cova del Gegant y Abric Romani (Barcelona) (López-García, 2008;.…”

Late Pleistocene Palaeoenvironmental Variations from Marine Isotope Stages 5 and 4: Small Mammals at Artazu VIII Site (Arrasate, Northern Iberian Peninsula)

“…The name of the site comes from Mount Artazu, in which it was situated, in the Upper Deba Valley. This area is surrounded by three mountain ranges: the first one formed by the peaks of Udalaitz Other sites in the proximity, especially Artazu VII (Suárez-Bilbao et al, 2016 and the Lezetxiki complex (formed by Lezetxiki and Lezetxiki II) (Altuna, 1972;Arrizabalaga and Iriarte, 2005;Garcia-Ibaibarriaga et al, 2018), have yielded important prehistoric remains (Fig. 1.1 and 1.2).…”

“…Selected samples were also dated through amino acid racemization (AAR), one of the few dating methods that can be used in such relatively old chronologies, as at Artazu VII (Suárez-Bilbao et al, 2016) and Las Callejuelas (Domingo et al, 2015). The dating of palaeontological and archaeological sites using AAR analysis has become a reliable method (Goodfriend, 1991;Kaufman and Manley, 1998;Torres et al, 2014, among others).…”

“…phases. An example of this is Cueva de la Buena Pinta (Laplana et al, 2016) (Suárez-Bilbao et al, 2016), Bolomor has a sequence between 350 and 100 ka BP corresponding to MIS 9-5 (Sañudo et al, 2016) and…”

“…Even more remarkable, the majority of these MIS records are located at the Mediterranean region: Bolomor and Cova Negra (Guillem-Calatayud, 2000, 2001, Cova de les Teixoneres (Rosell et al, 2010), and Cova del Rinoceront (López-García et al, 2016). In the center of the Iberian Peninsula are Cueva del Camino (Laplana et al, 2013;Blain et al, 2014) and HAT (Sesé et al, 2011), and under Atlantic influence Artazu VII (Suárez-Bilbao et al, 2016, Valdavara 3 (Vaquero et al, 2018) and Lezetxiki II (Garcia-Ibaibarriaga et al, 2018) (Fig. 1.1).…”