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Early Pleistocene large mammals from Maka’amitalu, Hadar, lower Awash Valley, Ethiopia

The Early Pleistocene was a critical time period in the evolution of eastern African mammal faunas, but fossil assemblages sampling this interval are poorly known from Ethiopia’s Afar Depression. Field work by the Hadar Research Project in the Busidima Formation exposures (~2.7–0.8 Ma) of Hadar in t...

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Autores principales: Rowan, John, Lazagabaster, Ignacio A., Campisano, Christopher J., Bibi, Faysal, Bobe, René, Boisserie, Jean-Renaud, Frost, Stephen R., Getachew, Tomas, Gilbert, Christopher C., Lewis, Margaret E., Melaku, Sahleselasie, Scott, Eric, Souron, Antoine, Werdelin, Lars, Kimbel, William H., Reed, Kaye E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8994497/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35411256
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.13210
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author Rowan, John
Lazagabaster, Ignacio A.
Campisano, Christopher J.
Bibi, Faysal
Bobe, René
Boisserie, Jean-Renaud
Frost, Stephen R.
Getachew, Tomas
Gilbert, Christopher C.
Lewis, Margaret E.
Melaku, Sahleselasie
Scott, Eric
Souron, Antoine
Werdelin, Lars
Kimbel, William H.
Reed, Kaye E.
author_facet Rowan, John
Lazagabaster, Ignacio A.
Campisano, Christopher J.
Bibi, Faysal
Bobe, René
Boisserie, Jean-Renaud
Frost, Stephen R.
Getachew, Tomas
Gilbert, Christopher C.
Lewis, Margaret E.
Melaku, Sahleselasie
Scott, Eric
Souron, Antoine
Werdelin, Lars
Kimbel, William H.
Reed, Kaye E.
author_sort Rowan, John
collection PubMed
description The Early Pleistocene was a critical time period in the evolution of eastern African mammal faunas, but fossil assemblages sampling this interval are poorly known from Ethiopia’s Afar Depression. Field work by the Hadar Research Project in the Busidima Formation exposures (~2.7–0.8 Ma) of Hadar in the lower Awash Valley, resulted in the recovery of an early Homo maxilla (A.L. 666-1) with associated stone tools and fauna from the Maka’amitalu basin in the 1990s. These assemblages are dated to ~2.35 Ma by the Bouroukie Tuff 3 (BKT-3). Continued work by the Hadar Research Project over the last two decades has greatly expanded the faunal collection. Here, we provide a comprehensive account of the Maka’amitalu large mammals (Artiodactyla, Carnivora, Perissodactyla, Primates, and Proboscidea) and discuss their paleoecological and biochronological significance. The size of the Maka’amitalu assemblage is small compared to those from the Hadar Formation (3.45–2.95 Ma) and Ledi-Geraru (2.8–2.6 Ma) but includes at least 20 taxa. Bovids, suids, and Theropithecus are common in terms of both species richness and abundance, whereas carnivorans, equids, and megaherbivores are rare. While the taxonomic composition of the Maka’amitalu fauna indicates significant species turnover from the Hadar Formation and Ledi-Geraru deposits, turnover seems to have occurred at a constant rate through time as taxonomic dissimilarity between adjacent fossil assemblages is strongly predicted by their age difference. A similar pattern characterizes functional ecological turnover, with only subtle changes in dietary proportions, body size proportions, and bovid abundances across the composite lower Awash sequence. Biochronological comparisons with other sites in eastern Africa suggest that the taxa recovered from the Maka’amitalu are broadly consistent with the reported age of the BKT-3 tuff. Considering the age of BKT-3 and biochronology, a range of 2.4–1.9 Ma is most likely for the faunal assemblage.
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spelling pubmed-89944972022-04-10 Early Pleistocene large mammals from Maka’amitalu, Hadar, lower Awash Valley, Ethiopia Rowan, John Lazagabaster, Ignacio A. Campisano, Christopher J. Bibi, Faysal Bobe, René Boisserie, Jean-Renaud Frost, Stephen R. Getachew, Tomas Gilbert, Christopher C. Lewis, Margaret E. Melaku, Sahleselasie Scott, Eric Souron, Antoine Werdelin, Lars Kimbel, William H. Reed, Kaye E. PeerJ Evolutionary Studies The Early Pleistocene was a critical time period in the evolution of eastern African mammal faunas, but fossil assemblages sampling this interval are poorly known from Ethiopia’s Afar Depression. Field work by the Hadar Research Project in the Busidima Formation exposures (~2.7–0.8 Ma) of Hadar in the lower Awash Valley, resulted in the recovery of an early Homo maxilla (A.L. 666-1) with associated stone tools and fauna from the Maka’amitalu basin in the 1990s. These assemblages are dated to ~2.35 Ma by the Bouroukie Tuff 3 (BKT-3). Continued work by the Hadar Research Project over the last two decades has greatly expanded the faunal collection. Here, we provide a comprehensive account of the Maka’amitalu large mammals (Artiodactyla, Carnivora, Perissodactyla, Primates, and Proboscidea) and discuss their paleoecological and biochronological significance. The size of the Maka’amitalu assemblage is small compared to those from the Hadar Formation (3.45–2.95 Ma) and Ledi-Geraru (2.8–2.6 Ma) but includes at least 20 taxa. Bovids, suids, and Theropithecus are common in terms of both species richness and abundance, whereas carnivorans, equids, and megaherbivores are rare. While the taxonomic composition of the Maka’amitalu fauna indicates significant species turnover from the Hadar Formation and Ledi-Geraru deposits, turnover seems to have occurred at a constant rate through time as taxonomic dissimilarity between adjacent fossil assemblages is strongly predicted by their age difference. A similar pattern characterizes functional ecological turnover, with only subtle changes in dietary proportions, body size proportions, and bovid abundances across the composite lower Awash sequence. Biochronological comparisons with other sites in eastern Africa suggest that the taxa recovered from the Maka’amitalu are broadly consistent with the reported age of the BKT-3 tuff. Considering the age of BKT-3 and biochronology, a range of 2.4–1.9 Ma is most likely for the faunal assemblage. PeerJ Inc. 2022-04-06 /pmc/articles/PMC8994497/ /pubmed/35411256 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.13210 Text en © 2022 Rowan et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Evolutionary Studies
Rowan, John
Lazagabaster, Ignacio A.
Campisano, Christopher J.
Bibi, Faysal
Bobe, René
Boisserie, Jean-Renaud
Frost, Stephen R.
Getachew, Tomas
Gilbert, Christopher C.
Lewis, Margaret E.
Melaku, Sahleselasie
Scott, Eric
Souron, Antoine
Werdelin, Lars
Kimbel, William H.
Reed, Kaye E.
Early Pleistocene large mammals from Maka’amitalu, Hadar, lower Awash Valley, Ethiopia
title Early Pleistocene large mammals from Maka’amitalu, Hadar, lower Awash Valley, Ethiopia
title_full Early Pleistocene large mammals from Maka’amitalu, Hadar, lower Awash Valley, Ethiopia
title_fullStr Early Pleistocene large mammals from Maka’amitalu, Hadar, lower Awash Valley, Ethiopia
title_full_unstemmed Early Pleistocene large mammals from Maka’amitalu, Hadar, lower Awash Valley, Ethiopia
title_short Early Pleistocene large mammals from Maka’amitalu, Hadar, lower Awash Valley, Ethiopia
title_sort early pleistocene large mammals from maka’amitalu, hadar, lower awash valley, ethiopia
topic Evolutionary Studies
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8994497/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35411256
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.13210
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