Middle Pleistocene vertebrate fossils from the Nefud Desert, Saudi Arabia: Implications for biogeography and palaeoecology

Abstract

The current paucity of Pleistocene vertebrate records from the Arabian Peninsula-a landmass of over 3 million km 2-is a significant gap in our knowledge of the Quaternary. Such data are critical lines of contextual evidence for considering animal and hominin dispersals between Africa and Eurasia generally, and hominin palaeoecology in the Pleistocene landscapes of the Arabian interior specifically. Here, we describe an important contribution to the record and report stratigraphically-constrained fossils of mammals, birds and reptiles from recent excavations at the site at Ti's al Ghadah in the southwestern Nefud Desert. U series and combined US-ESR analyses of Oryx sp. teeth indicate that the assemblage is Middle Pleistocene in age and dates to ca. 500 ka. The identified fauna is a biogeographical admixture that consists of likely endemics and taxa of African and Eurasian affinity and includes extinct and extant (or related Pleistocene forms of) mammals (Palaeoloxodon cf. recki, Panthera cf. gombaszogenis, Equus hemionus, cf. Crocuta crocuta, Vulpes sp., Canis anthus, Oryx sp.), the first Pleistocene records of birds from the Arabian Peninsula (Struthio sp., Neophron percnopterus, Milvus cf. migrans, Tachybaptus sp. Anas sp., Pterocles orientalis, Motacilla cf. alba) and reptiles (Varanidae/Uromastyx sp.). We infer that the assemblage reflects mortality in populations of herbivorous animals and their predators and scavengers that were attracted to freshwater and plant resources in the inter-dune basin. At present, there is no evidence to suggest hominin agency in the accumulation of the bone assemblages. The inferred ecological characteristics of the taxa recovered indicate the presence, at least periodically, of substantial water-bodies and open grassland habitats.

Resolving problematic luminescence chronologies for carbonate- and evaporite-rich sediments spanning multiple humid periods in the Jubbah Basin, Saudi Arabia

“…The upper three samples collected from JB3 had some of the greatest recorded carbonate contents, but also yielded uranium contents <2.5 ppm. This is more in line with typical uranium concentrations measured in the Nefud, which tend to be ≤3 ppm (Richard P Jennings et al, 2016;Rosenberg et al, 2013;Stimpson et al, 2016).…”

“…Numerous recent studies focusing on the Arabian Peninsula have provided chronologically secure data for key archaeological (Armitage et al, 2011;Groucutt and Petraglia, 2012;Groucutt et al, 2015b;Richard P. Jennings et al, 2016;Petraglia et al, 2015), palaeontological (Stimpson et al, 2016), and palaeoecological and palaeoclimatic applications (Parton et al, 2015a;Rosenberg et al, 2013Rosenberg et al, , 2011a. From these data, it is clear that multiple regions in the Arabian Peninsula have been considerably more humid in the past, with significant implications for biogeographical responses and population expansions into and through this region.…”

Rediscovering a forgotten canid species

“…Allen's viewpoint was rapidly accepted in both the ecological and evolutionary research communities and since that time few authors have considered the African wolf a distinct species, despite there being a few notable exceptions: Keimer mentions C. lupaster in his faunal work on Egypt [45]; Kurtén lists the wolf jackal (C. lupaster) for a fossil collection from the Levant and suggests the presence of extant C. lupaster in North Africa [46]; Ferguson studied C. lupaster crania from Israel and concluded that C. aureus lupaster differs from C. aureus and represents a small desert race of C. lupus [38]. Most recently an m1 from Middle Pleistocene deposits in the Nefud Desert, Saudi Arabia, has been identified as C. anthus [47].…”

Rock art provides new evidence on the biogeography of kudu (Tragelaphus imberbis), wild dromedary, aurochs (Bos primigenius) and African wild ass (Equus africanus) in the early and middle Holocene of north‐western Arabia

“…The presence of lesser kudu in Saudi Arabia therefore raises the question whether they arrived during the Pleistocene and survived the Last Glacial Maximum in small refugia, yet in large enough numbers to sustain populations over some millennia. Alternatively, a dispersal of kudu during the Holocene humid period via the Sinai and Levant or the Red Sea is a possibility, as has been surmised for Middle and Late Pleistocene movements of other species (Breeze et al., ; Stimpson et al., ).…”

“…The presence of palaeolakes is well attested at the oasis of Jubbah, with various lake phases dated to the early and middle Holocene, and palaeoecological reconstructions indicating well-vegetated environments Hilbert et al, 2014). Kudu are almost exclusively browsers (Estes, 1991;Kingdon, 1997); therefore, there must have Stimpson et al, 2016).…”