Refining upon the climatic background of the Early Pleistocene hominid settlement in western Europe: Barranco León and Fuente Nueva-3 (Guadix-Baza Basin, SE Spain)

Blain, Hugues‐Alexandre; Lózano-Fernández, Iván; Agustı́, Jordi; Bailón, Salvador; Granda, Leticia Menéndez; Ortiz, María Patrocinio Espigares; Ros-Montoya, Sergio; Arenas, Juan Manuel Jiménez; Toro-Moyano, Isidro; Martı́nez-Navarro, Bienvenido; Sala, Robert

doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2016.05.020

Cited by 95 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…The Baza saline lake and its surrounding fresh-water sources and hot springs certainly provided favorable conditions for numerous animal species, including early hominins. This scenario is coherent with paleoclimatic data, which indicates warmer winters and more humid conditions than today [76,77].…”

Section: Context Of the Bl Sitesupporting

confidence: 86%

“…Due to subsequent headwater erosion, the Baza sub-basin became punctuated by deep gorges and ravines (Spanish barrancos) ( Fig 1A), exposing an exceptionally rich archeo-paleontological record of large and small vertebrate fossils, as well as stone tools bearing witness to the presence of hominins in the area since the earliest European Oldowan [61,62]. Specifically, the BL ( Fig 1B) [68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78], both of these sites have yielded important information about the lifeways of the oldest hominin groups present outside of Africa some 1.4 and 1.2 Ma, respectively [79,80,81,82,83,84,85]. The hominins presence is now well-attested in Europe from this timeframe onwards ( Fig 1C).…”

Section: Context Of the Bl Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

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Subspheroids in the lithic assemblage of Barranco León (Spain): Recognizing the late Oldowan in Europe

et al. 2020

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The lithic assemblage of Barranco León (BL), attributed to the Oldowan techno-complex, contributes valuable information to reconstruct behavioral patterning of the first hominins to disperse into Western Europe. This archaic stone tool assemblage comprises two, very different groups of tools, made from distinct raw materials. On the one hand, a small-sized toolkit knapped from Jurassic flint, comprising intensively exploited cores and small-sized flakes and fragments and, on the other hand, a large-sized limestone toolkit that is mainly linked to percussive activities. In recent years, the limestone macro-tools have been the center of particular attention, leading to a re-evaluation of their role in the assemblage. Main results bring to light strict hominin selective processes, mainly concerning the quality of the limestone and the morphology of the cobbles, in relation to their use-patterning. In addition to the variety of traces of percussion identified on the limestone tools, recurrences have recently been documented in their positioning and in the morphology of the active surfaces. Coupled with experimental work, this data has contributed to formulating hypothesis about the range of uses for these tools, beyond stone knapping and butchery, for activities such as: wood-working or tendon and meat tenderizing. The abundance of hammerstones, as well as the presence of heavy-duty scrapers, are special features recognized for the limestone component of the Barranco León assemblage. This paper presents, for the first time, another characteristic of the assemblage: the presence of polyhedral and, especially, subspheroid morphologies, virtually unknown in the European context for this timeframe. We present an analysis of these tools, combining qualitative evaluation of the raw materials, diacritical study, 3D geometric morphometric analysis of facet angles and an evaluation of the type and position of percussive traces; opening up the discussion of the late Oldowan beyond the African context.

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Section: Context Of the Bl Sitesupporting

confidence: 86%

Section: Context Of the Bl Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

Subspheroids in the lithic assemblage of Barranco León (Spain): Recognizing the late Oldowan in Europe

et al. 2020

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“…The estimation of the water fluxes and infiltration rates becomes particularly difficult for old surfaces (having an age >20 kyr). Although the paleoclimate studies give some hints about the hydrological conditions over time, they are all not precise enough and only enable a rough, regional estimate at its best (Minnich, 2007;Reheis et al, 2012;Heyman et al, 2013;Blain et al, 2016;Kigoshi et al, 2017). In our model, a misjudgement of the infiltration rate has, thus, the greatest effect on a change in soil depth.…”

Section: Sensitivity Analysismentioning

confidence: 95%

Prediction of Soil Formation as a Function of Age Using the Percolation Theory Approach

Egli

Hunt

Dahms

et al. 2018

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Recent modeling and comparison with field results showed that soil formation by chemical weathering, either from bedrock or unconsolidated material, is limited largely by solute transport. Chemical weathering rates are proportional to solute velocities. Nonreactive solute transport described by non-Gaussian transport theory appears compatible with soil formation rates. This change in understanding opens new possibilities for predicting soil production and depth across orders of magnitude of time scales. Percolation theory for modeling the evolution of soil depth and production was applied to new and published data for alpine and Mediterranean soils. The first goal was to check whether the empirical data conform to the theory. Secondly we analyzed discrepancies between theory and observation to find out if the theory is incomplete, if modifications of existing experimental procedures are needed and what parameters might be estimated improperly. Not all input parameters required for current theoretical formulations (particle size, erosion, and infiltration rates) are collected routinely in the field; thus, theory must address how to find these quantities from existing climate and soil data repositories, which implicitly introduces some uncertainties. Existing results for soil texture, typically reported at relevant field sites, had to be transformed to results for a median particle size, d 50 , a specific theoretical input parameter. The modeling tracked reasonably well the evolution of the alpine and Mediterranean soils. For the Alpine sites we found, however, that we consistently overestimated soil depths by ∼45%. Particularly during early soil formation, chemical weathering is more severely limited by reaction kinetics than by solute transport. The kinetic limitation of mineral weathering can affect the system until 1 kyr to a maximum of 10 kyr of soil evolution. Thereafter, solute transport seems dominant. The trend and scatter of soil depth evolution is well captured, particularly for Mediterranean soils. We assume that some neglected processes, such as bioturbation, tree throw, and land use change contributed to local reorganization of the soil and thus to some differences to the model. Nonetheless, the model is able to generate soil depth and confirms decreasing production rates with age. A steady state for soils is not reached before about 100 kyr to 1 Myr

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“…Taxonomic composition of the assemblage allows us to evaluate the prevailing climatic conditions at the time of the formation of this Unit (Hernández-Fernández & Peláez-Campomanes, 2005). As an approach to assess the climatic conditions, we have used the Mutual Ecogeographic Range method (MER) (Blain et al, 2009(Blain et al, , 2016, which identifi es the geographic regions where all the species of the assemblage live nowadays and extrapolate the current mean values for the climatic parameters to our Unit. Parameters estimated are mean annual temperature (MAT) and mean annual precipitation (MAP).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geological context and micromammal fauna characterisation from the karstic infilling of La Pedrera (Albaida, Valencia, E Spain)

Fagoaga

Molina

Crespo

et al. 2020

Spanish J. Palaeontol.

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La Pedrera is a new palaeontological site located south of the province of Valencia, between the Betic and Iberian Ranges, in a cavity fi lled with sediments inside a tufa formation. Roughly 260 fossil remains, corresponding to 14 taxa, have been recovered and studied from Unit III. Six rodents (Microtus sp., M. sp. gr. M. (Terricola) duodecimcostatuslusitanicus, Microtus sp. gr. M. brecciensis-cabrerae, Arvicola sapidus, Eliomys quercinus, and Apodemus sp. gr. sylvaticusfl avicollis), one lagomorph (Oryctolagus cf. cuniculus), three insectivores (Soricinae indet., Crocidura sp., and Talpa cf. europaea) and four bats (Myotis blythii, Rhinolophus cf. ferrumequinum, Myotis bechsteinii, and Rhinolophus euryale) have been identifi ed. The relative chronology obtained by means of the identifi ed species and geological information suggests that this part of the cavity was fi lled with sediments during the Late Pleistocene or the beginnings of the Holocene. Furthermore, Mutual Ecogeographic Range method and RESUMEN La Pedrera es un yacimiento paleontológico localizado en el sur de la provincia de Valencia, entre las Cordilleras Bética e Ibérica, en una cavidad rellena con sedimentos dentro de una formación tobácea. Se han estudiado cerca de 260 fósiles, correspondientes a 14 taxones, procedentes de la Unidad III. Han sido identifi cados seis roedores (Microtus sp., M. sp. gr. M. (Terricola) duodecimcostatus-lusitanicus, M. sp. cf. M. brecciensis-cabrerae, Arvicola sapidus, Eliomys quercinus y Apodemus sp. gr. sylvaticus-flavicollis), un lagomorfo (Oryctolagus cf. cuniculus), tres insectívoros (Soricinae indet., Crocidura sp. y Talpa cf. europaea) y cuatro murciélagos (Myotis blythii, Rhinolophus cf. ferrumequinum, Myotis bechsteinii y Rhinolophus euryale). La cronología relativa obtenida a través de las especies identifi cadas y la información geológica apuntan a un relleno de esta parte de la cavidad durante el Pleistoceno Superior o inicios del Holoceno. El método Mutual Ecogeographic Range (Rango

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Refining upon the climatic background of the Early Pleistocene hominid settlement in western Europe: Barranco León and Fuente Nueva-3 (Guadix-Baza Basin, SE Spain)

Cited by 95 publications

References 54 publications

Subspheroids in the lithic assemblage of Barranco León (Spain): Recognizing the late Oldowan in Europe

Subspheroids in the lithic assemblage of Barranco León (Spain): Recognizing the late Oldowan in Europe

Prediction of Soil Formation as a Function of Age Using the Percolation Theory Approach

Geological context and micromammal fauna characterisation from the karstic infilling of La Pedrera (Albaida, Valencia, E Spain)

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