Search results for "ABI"
showing 10 items of 30486 documents
New data about the landscape of the first occupation of Mallorca: Coval Simó (Escorca, Mallorca)
2020
The Coval Simó shelter provides some of the oldest evidence for settlement on the island of Mallorca and the Balearic archipelago. It also has the peculiarity of being a habitat in a mountain area, so that the human groups that settled there had to adapt their agricultural and farming system to this environment. The plant remains (wood charcoal and seeds) recovered in the occupation levels allow us to address these issues, since they are the result of the different activities developed in this cavity: fuel for domestic activities, food for livestock, etc. The results of this study show that between the III and II millennium cal BC, an agricultural system based on livestock and cereal farmi…
Dental microwear texture analysis on extant and extinct sharks : Ante- or post-mortem tooth wear?
2020
Sharks are apex-predators that play an important role in past and present aquatic food webs. However, their diet - especially in extinct species - is often not well constrained. Dental microwear texture analysis (DMTA) has been successfully applied to reconstruct diet and feeding behaviours of different aquatic and terrestrial vertebrates. However, unlike in mammals, food-to-tooth contact in sharks is rather limited because only larger prey is manipulated before swallowing. Together with a fast tooth replacement rate, this reduces wear on individual teeth. Here, we present an explorative study of dental microwear texture on extant and extinct sharks to test whether ante-mortem wear is relat…
Bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr in different environmental samples — Effects of anthropogenic contamination and implications for isoscapes in past migration s…
2012
(87)Sr/(86)Sr reference maps (isoscapes) are a key tool for investigating past human and animal migrations. However, there is little understanding of which biosphere samples are best proxies for local bioavailable Sr when dealing with movements of past populations. In this study, biological and geological samples (ground vegetation, tree leaves, rock leachates, water, soil extracts, as well as modern and archeological animal teeth and snail shells) were collected in the vicinity of two early medieval cemeteries ("Thuringians", 5-6th century AD) in central Germany, in order to characterize (87)Sr/(86)Sr of the local biosphere. Animal tooth enamel is not appropriate in this specific context t…
Trilobites from the Red Fauna (latest Emsian, Devonian) of Hamar Laghdad, Morocco and their biodiversity
2018
36 pages; International audience; Trilobites are widespread in Early Devonian deposits of north Gondwana; some of the most emblematic ones were collected from the famous latest Emsian (Early Devonian) mudmound locality Hamar Laghdad in south-eastern Morocco. This locality is famous for its trilobites, especially for the conspicuous red-coloured remains of phacopid trilobites with often greenish eyes. Here, we present a taxonomic revision of the previously described trilobites from the so-called Red Fauna of Hamar Laghdad. We introduce the new taxa Harpes hamarlaghdadensis n. sp. and Morocops davidbrutoni n. sp. Phacopids dominate the trilobite assemblage from the Red Cliff at Hamar Laghdad …
Terrestrial plants and marine algae from the Late Jurassic lithographic limestone of the Causse Méjean (Lozère, southern France)
2016
International audience; A new Late Jurassic flora was discovered in the fossiliferous lithographic limestone of the Causse Méjean, Lozère (southern France). It consists of the first Kimmeridgian/Tithonian plants from this area. Fossil plants are represented by megaremains preserved as impressions. This flora shows a co-occurrence of terrestrial plants and marine algae. The land plants include vegetative remains ascribed to bennettitaleans (Zamites Brongniart, 1828), conifers (Brachyphyllum Brongniart, 1828), and pteridosperms (Cycadopteris Zigno, 1853). Marine algae were ascribed to dasyclads (Goniolina D’Orbigny, 1850). Lithological and palaeontological features suggest preservation in a f…
Seasonal and habitat effects on the nutritional properties of savanna vegetation: Potential implications for early hominin dietary ecology.
2019
The African savannas that many early hominins occupied likely experienced stark seasonality and contained mosaic habitats (i.e., combinations of woodlands, wetlands, grasslands, etc.). Most would agree that the bulk of dietary calories obtained by taxa such as Australopithecus and Paranthropus came from the consumption of vegetation growing across these landscapes. It is also likely that many early hominins were selective feeders that consumed particular plants/plant parts (e.g., leaves, fruit, storage organs) depending on the habitat and season within which they were foraging. Thus, improving our understanding of how the nutritional properties of potential hominin plant foods growing in mo…
Experimental socioecology: Integrative science for anthropocene landscape dynamics
2016
Abstract The emergence of coupled natural and human landscapes marked a transformative interval in the human past that set our species on the road to the urbanized, industrial world in which we live. This emergence enabled technologies and social institutions responsible for human-natural couplings in domains beyond rural, agricultural settings. The Mediterranean Landscape Dynamics Project (MedLand) is studying the interacting social and biophysical processes associated with these novel socioecological systems and their long-term consequences using a new form of 'experimental socioecology' made possible by recent advances in computation. We briefly describe the MedLand modeling laboratory, …
Dental calculus indicates widespread plant use within the stable Neanderthal dietary niche.
2018
The ecology of Neanderthals is a pressing question in the study of hominin evolution. Diet appears to have played a prominent role in their adaptation to Eurasia. Based on isotope and zooarchaeological studies, Neanderthal diet has been reconstructed as heavily meat-based and generally similar across different environments. This image persists, despite recent studies suggesting more plant use and more variation. However, we have only a fragmentary picture of their dietary ecology, and how it may have varied among habitats, because we lack broad and environmentally representative information about their use of plants and other foods. To address the problem, we examined the plant microremains…
Current Wildland Fire Patterns and Challenges in Europe: A Synthesis of National Perspectives
2021
Changes in climate, land use, and land management impact the occurrence and severity of wildland fires in many parts of the world. This is particularly evident in Europe, where ongoing changes in land use have strongly modified fire patterns over the last decades. Although satellite data by the European Forest Fire Information System provide large-scale wildland fire statistics across European countries, there is still a crucial need to collect and summarize in-depth local analysis and understanding of the wildland fire condition and associated challenges across Europe. This article aims to provide a general overview of the current wildland fire patterns and challenges as perceived by natio…
Ammonite dating of latest Cretaceous mosasaurid reptiles (Squamata, Mosasauroidea) from Jordan—preliminary observations
2017
Newly collected ammonoid material from the uppermost Cretaceous portion of the Muwaqqar Chalk Marl Formation exposed some 30 km southeast of the Qasr Al’Harrana area (east-central Jordan) includes medium-sized baculitids (Baculites ovatus auctorum, non Say), the sphenodiscid Libycoceras acutodorsatus (Noetling) and the pachydiscids Menuites fresvillensis (Seunes) and Pachydiscus (Pachydiscus) dossantosi (Maury). Of the two last named taxa, the former is a good marker species for the upper Maastrichtian, with records from Europe, central Chile, South India, Baluchistan (Pakistan), Australia, Madagascar and South Africa. The latter is known from the United Arab Emirates/Oman border area, from…