Search results for "PLEISTOCENE"
showing 10 items of 298 documents
Early cave art and ancient DNA record the origin of European bison
2016
The two living species of bison (European and American) are among the few terrestrial megafauna to have survived the late Pleistocene extinctions. Despite the extensive bovid fossil record in Eurasia, the evolutionary history of the European bison (or wisent, Bison bonasus) before the Holocene (<11.7 thousand years ago (kya)) remains a mystery. We use complete ancient mitochondrial genomes and genome-wide nuclear DNA surveys to reveal that the wisent is the product of hybridization between the extinct steppe bison (Bison priscus) and ancestors of modern cattle (aurochs, Bos primigenius) before 120 kya, and contains up to 10% aurochs genomic ancestry. Although undetected within the fossil re…
Survival of Late Pleistocene Hunter-Gatherer Ancestry in the Iberian Peninsula
2019
The Iberian Peninsula in southwestern Europe represents an important test case for the study of human population movements during prehistoric periods. During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the peninsula formed a periglacial refugium [1] for hunter-gatherers (HGs) and thus served as a potential source for the re-peopling of northern latitudes [2]. The post-LGM genetic signature was previously described as a cline from Western HG (WHG) to Eastern HG (EHG), further shaped by later Holocene expansions from the Near East and the North Pontic steppes [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. Western and central Europe were dominated by ancestry associated with the ∼14,000-year-old individual from Villabruna, Italy…
Microwear and isotopic analyses on cave bear remains from Toll Cave reveal both short-term and long-term dietary habits
2019
Dietary habits of the extinct Ursus spelaeus have always been a controversial topic in paleontological studies. In this work, we investigate carbon and nitrogen values in the bone collagen and dental microwear of U. spelaeus specimens recovered in Level 4 from Toll Cave (Moia, Catalonia, NE Iberian Peninsula). These remains have been dated to > 49,000 C-14 BP. The ability of both proxies to provide data on the diet of U. spelaeus at different times in the life-history (isotopes: average diet of life; microwear: last days/weeks before death), allows us to generate high-resolution and complementary data. Our results show lower values (delta C-13 & delta N-15) in cave bears than in strict herb…
Demogenomic modeling of the timing and the processes of early European farmers differentiation
2020
AbstractThe precise genetic origins of the first Neolithic farming populations, as well as the processes and the timing of their differentiation, remain largely unknown. Based on demogenomic modeling of high-quality ancient genomes, we show that the early farmers of Anatolia and Europe emerged from a multiphase mixing of a Near Eastern population with a strongly bottlenecked Western hunter-gatherer population after the Last Glacial Maximum. Moreover, the population branch leading to the first farmers of Europe and Anatolia is characterized by a 2,500-year period of extreme genetic drift during its westward range expansion. Based on these findings, we derive a spatially explicit model of the…
2012
Hunter-gatherers living in Europe during the transition from the late Pleistocene to the Holocene intensified food acquisition by broadening the range of resources exploited to include marine taxa. However, little is known on the nature of this dietary change in the Mediterranean Basin. A key area to investigate this issue is the archipelago of the Egadi Islands, most of which were connected to Sicily until the early Holocene. The site of Grotta d’Oriente, on the present-day island of Favignana, was occupied by hunter-gatherers when Postglacial environmental changes were taking place (14,000-7,500 cal BP). Here we present the results of AMS radiocarbon dating, palaeogenetic and isotopic ana…
Allopolyploidisation in a geological collision zone: on the origin of the tetraploid Anthemis cupaniana Nyman (Compositae, Anthemideae) in Sicily
2022
AbstractThe genus Anthemis has a circum-Mediterranean distribution and comprises c. 175 annual, biennial, and perennial species with polyploid species and species complexes found in its section A. sect. Hiorthia. In Sicily, the genus is represented by 13 species, one of these being the tetraploid A. cupaniana, which is endemic to the island and is distributed throughout the limestone mountains at elevations between 500 and 1800 m a.s.l. Discordant positions in phylogenetic trees based on two plastid regions (psbA-trnH and trnC-petN) and on one nuclear marker (nrDNA ITS1 + 5.8S + ITS2) reveal that the species is of allopolyploid origin, with the maternal parent from the species group around …
Geodetic and geological evidence of active tectonics in south-western Sicily (Italy)
2014
Abstract Integrated geological, geodetic and marine geophysical data provide evidence of active deformation in south-western Sicily, in an area spatially coincident with the macroseismic zone of the destructive 1968 Belice earthquake sequence. Even though the sequence represents the strongest seismic event recorded in Western Sicily in historical times, focal solutions provided by different authors are inconclusive on possible faulting mechanism, which ranges from thrusting to transpression, and the seismogenic source is still undefined. Interferometric (DInSAR) observations reveal a differential ground motion on a SW–NE alignment between Campobello di Mazara and Castelvetrano (CCA), locate…
New Neandertal remains from Cova Negra (Valencia, Spain).
2005
New Neandertal fossils from the Mousterian site of Cova Negra in the Valencia region of Spain are described, and a comprehensive study of the entire human fossil sample is provided. The new specimens significantly augment the sample of human remains from this site and make Cova Negra one of the richest human paleontological sites on the Iberian Peninsula. The new specimens include cranial and postcranial elements from immature individuals and provide an opportunity to study the ontogenetic appearance of adult Neandertal characteristics in this Pleistocene population. Children younger than 10 years of age constitute four of the seven minimum number of individuals in the sample, and this rela…
Presencia de Vulpes praeglacialis (Kormos, 1932) en el yacimiento pleistoceno de la Sierra de Quibas (Abanilla, Murcia)
2006
We describe the first remains of Canidae from the Lower Pleistocene karstic locality of Quibas (Abanillas, Murcia) that increasing the representation of carnivores in this site. These fossils are identified as Vulpes praeglacialis, the typical Lower Pleistocene fox. This assignment is based on their small size and the poorly developed posterior cuspid of the p/3.