Search results for "Micromammals"

Climate, environment and human behaviour in the Middle Palaeolithic of Abrigo de la Quebrada (Valencia, Spain): The evidence from charred plant and m…

2019

Abstract The Abrigo de la Quebrada rock shelter was occupied by Neanderthal groups during the early Upper Pleistocene, yielding evidence for their subsistence practices and local resource exploitation. This paper focuses on the plant macroremains and the micromammals, which provide information about occupation patterns, the surrounding landscape, the use of resources, and the environment. Mountain pine forests and permanent grass formations containing humid zones and open spaces that would have harboured an eurythermal microfauna were the dominant landscape type. Cold-climate pines provided most of the firewood. The data are consistent with a recurrent, seasonal occupation pattern, in which…

Wildcat scats: Taphonomy of the predator and its micromamal prey

2019

Small sized felids, such as wild and domestic cats, are one of the most common predators in the nature and in sites occupied by humans in archaeological and historical contexts. Wildcats have ingestion/ digestion traits highly destructive for their prey, i.e.: teeth to chew causing extreme breakage, and digestion along the entire digestive tract with low pH gastric juices causing extreme bone corrosion. Small sized cats are also well known to play with the prey and select skeletal parts to ingest. The present study is focused on the taphonomic analysis of micromammal remains recovered from scats produced by European wildcats (Felis silvestris silvestris) during several months and years. Exc…

The owl that never left! Taphonomy of Earlier Stone Age small mammal assemblages from Wonderwerk Cave (South Africa)

2022

Wonderwerk Cave, in South Africa, is an exceptional site that has yielded a large collection of small mammal fossils in a stratigraphic sequence reaching back ca. 2 million years. Taphonomic studies undertaken to date, show that Tytonidae (likely Tyto alba) was the dominant predator during the Earlier Stone Age. They produced masses of pellets that formed a dense carpet-like surface that covered the cave floor at intervals throughout the sequence. This paper compares the taphonomic signatures of five different Earlier Stone Age small mammal assemblages from Wonderwerk Cave, including assemblages not studied before, as well as a modern pellet assemblage collected from inside the cave. These …

Preliminary palaeontological data from the Loma Negra section (Bardenas Reales de Navarra, Lower-Middle Miocene)

2013

En este trabajo se da a conocer una nueva localidad fosilífera de la Formación Tudela (Navarra). Esta formación está compuesta por facies palustres, lacustres y aluviales distales, que representan el relleno del sector occidental- central de la Cuenca del Ebro durante el Rambliense y el Aragoniense (Mioceno inferior-medio). Basado en el estudio de los restos fósiles de micromamíferos, la nueva localidad fosilífera se sitúa bioestratigráficamente en la zona D del Aragoniense. Los datos paleoecológicos obtenidos de los micromamíferos indican que el ambiente debió ser húmedo y la temperatura templada. En lo que respecta a la zona palustre, los ostrácodos, carofitas y gasterópodos definirían un…

Les micromammifères du département de l'Isère (Rhône-Alpes, France) : répartition par district naturel.

2013

Micromammals of the French department of Isère (Rhône-Alpes) : distribution by natural district. - This article presents the distribution of the species of micromammals of the department of Isère (Rhône-Alpes, France), by natural district from the analysis of 78,100 specimens inventoried and registered in a database of the micromammals of the department. For each species, a comparison of its distribution is made between districts. This synthesis is a photograph of the current knowledge and it also allows to define the future researches to improve the knowledge and the protection of micromammals in Isère.

The Late Pliocene and Pleistocene Small mammal chronology in the Italian Peninsula

2004

The small mammals (insectivores, bats and rodents) from the Holocene site of Vallone Inferno (Scillato, Sicily)

2013

The Vallone Inferno rock-shelter is an archeological site located at 770 m a.s.l. in the Madonie massif in Sicily. This massif is modeled into the Triassic and Oligocene sedimentary rocks of the Imerese Basin. Thearchaeological excavations conducted since 2008 have provided a long prehistoric and historic sequence from the Neolithic to the medieval period. From the four sedimentary complexes identified, only levels 3.4 to 3.1 from complex 3 and 4.2 from complex 4 have yielded small-mammal material. Level 4.2 is poor in remains and as yet without cultural ascription, though it has a radiocarbon age of 9450±50 years BP. Level 3.4 has yielded fragments of ceramic characteristic of the Middle N…