Lions as Bone Accumulators? Paleontological and Ecological Implications of a Modern Bone Assemblage from Olduvai Gorge

Abstract

Analytic models have been developed to reconstruct early hominin behaviour, especially their subsistence patterns, revealed mainly through taphonomic analyses of archaeofaunal assemblages. Taphonomic research is used to discern which agents (carnivores, humans or both) generate the bone assemblages recovered at archaeological sites. Taphonomic frameworks developed during the last decades show that the only large-sized carnivores in African biomes able to create bone assemblages are leopards and hyenas. A carnivore-made bone assemblage located in the short-grassland ecological unit of the Serengeti (within Olduvai Gorge) was studied. Taphonomic analyses of this assemblage including skeletal part representation, bone density, breakage patterns and anatomical distribution of tooth marks, along with an ecological approach to the prey selection made by large carnivores of the Serengeti, were carried out. The results show that this bone assemblage may be the first lion-accumulated assemblage documented, although other carnivores (namely spotted hyenas) may have also intervened through postdepositional ravaging. This first faunal assemblage potentially created by lions constitutes a new framework for neotaphonomic studies. Since lions may accumulate carcasses under exceptional circumstances, such as those documented at the site reported here, this finding may have important consequences for interpretations of early archaeological and paleontological sites, which provide key information about human evolution.

Developments in data science solutions for carnivore tooth pit classification

“…From this perspective, it is important to point out that highly sophisticated techniques are not the all-encompassing solution that many analysts are looking for. When considering how carnivores can usually be described by the type 2 , 3 , 30 , ratio 27 , 34 , 36 , 50 and size of bite damage 51 – 53 , alongside the location 54 – 56 and extent of damage 57 , it can be seen how modelling carnivore behaviour should also take into account a wide range of different factors beyond BSMs. While neither one of these techniques can exclusively answer these questions, when combined, taphonomists currently have a very powerful toolkit at their disposal for discerning precise carnivore intervention.…”

Taphonomic and zooarchaeological investigations at the middle Pleistocene site of Ti's al Ghadah, western Nefud Desert, Saudi Arabia

“…Therefore, it appears that if hominins and hyenas modified the Unit 5 assemblage, they did so only marginally. These ratios are, however, more consistent with processing by other less bone destructive carnivores such as lions and wolves (Sala et al, 2014;Arriaza et al, 2016). Indeed, a comparison of medium-sized ungulate carcasses processed by wild and captive wolves and the Unit 5 assemblage found no significant difference in shaft circumference completeness (Table 5).…”

“…Alternatively, the low number of tooth-marked long bones may reflect primary access to carcasses by large felids, which is also supported by the abundance of Type 3 long bones and the living structure mortality profile (although the latter is also consistent with a number of zooarchaeological assemblages). Felids are specialised flesh-eaters with teeth especially designed for meat slicing, and, as a result, generate comparatively fewer tooth marks and broken bones during carcass processing than do more durophagous carnivores like hyenas and canids (Turner and Anton, 1997;Domínguez-Rodrigo et al, 2007;Pobiner, 2007;Gidna et al, 2014;Arriaza et al, 2016;Aramendi et al, 2017). Indeed, the number of tooth-marked epiphyses falls within the range observed in modern landscape assemblages accumulated by wild lions (Fig.…”

“…During carcass processing and consumption, hominins and large bone-crushing carnivores systematically break open long bones to exploit marrow and as a result tend to generate assemblages dominated by Type 1 shafts (Bunn, 1982;Marean and Spencer, 1991;Marean et al, 2004). On the other hand, less bone-destructive carnivores such as canids and felids typically produce assemblages that comprise more Type 2 and Type 3 shafts (Sala et al, 2014;Arriaza et al, 2016). Consequently, the relative abundance of fragmented and complete long bone shafts provides a valuable means for investigating the role of hominins and carnivores in the accumulation of fossil assemblages.…”

EarlyHomo, plasticity and the extended evolutionary synthesis

“…This means paying attention to issues of microstratigraphy and geochronology, to refine time packets for palaeodemes, but also to issues such as how we infer predator load and resource availability at a locale (e.g. [121,122]). Each of these requires its own set of extant models to groundtruth the linkages between the signal and the resource inferred from it, for example, between predator accumulations of bone and predator load on the landscape, or between presence of shellfish and signatures of aquatic resource use (e.g.…”