Understanding the Impact of Trampling on Rodent Bones

Experiments based on the premise of uniformitarism are an effective tool to establish patterns of taphonomic processes acting either before, or after, burial. One process that has been extensively investigated experimentally is the impact of trampling to large mammal bones. Since trampling marks caused by sedimentary friction strongly mimic cut marks made by humans using stone tools during butchery, distinguishing the origin of such modifications is especially relevant to the study of human evolution. In contrast, damage resulting from trampling on small mammal fossil bones has received less attention, despite the fact that it may solve interesting problems relating to site formation processes. While it has been observed that the impact of compression depends on the type of substrate and dryness of the skeletal elements, the fragility of small mammal bones may imply that they will break as a response to compression. Here, we have undertaken a controlled experiment using material resistance compression equipment to simulate a preliminary experiment, previously devised by one of us, on human trampling of owl pellets. Our results demonstrate that different patterns of breakage can be distinguished under wet and dry conditions in mandibles, skulls and long bones that deform or break in a consistent way. Further, small compact bones almost always remain intact, resisting breakage under compression. The pattern obtained here was applied to a Pleistocene small mammal fossil assemblage from Wonderwerk Cave (South Africa). This collection showed unusually extensive breakage and skeletal element representation that could not be entirely explained by excavation procedures or digestion by the predator. We propose that trampling was a significant factor in small mammal bone destruction at Wonderwerk Cave, partly the product of trampling caused by the raptor that introduced the microfauna into the cave, as well as by hominins and other terrestrial animals that entered the cave and trampled pellets covering the cave floor

Origins and genetic legacy of prehistoric dogs

Dogs were the first domestic animal, but little is known about their population history and to what extent it was linked to humans. We sequenced 27 ancient dog genomes and found that all dogs share a common ancestry distinct from present-day wolves, with limited gene flow from wolves since domestication but substantial dog-to-wolf gene flow. By 11,000 years ago, at least five major ancestry lineages had diversified, demonstrating a deep genetic history of dogs during the Paleolithic. Coanalysis with human genomes reveals aspects of dog population history that mirror humans, including Levant-related ancestry in Africa and early agricultural Europe. Other aspects differ, including the impacts of steppe pastoralist expansions in West and East Eurasia and a near-complete turnover of Neolithic European dog ancestry

Ancient pigs reveal a near-complete genomic turnover following their introduction to Europe

Archaeological evidence indicates that pig domestication had begun by ~10,500 y before the present (BP) in the Near East, and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) suggests that pigs arrived in Europe alongside farmers ~8,500 y BP. A few thousand years after the introduction of Near Eastern pigs into Europe, however, their characteristic mtDNA signature disappeared and was replaced by haplotypes associated with European wild boars. This turnover could be accounted for by substantial gene flow from local Euro-pean wild boars, although it is also possible that European wild boars were domesticated independently without any genetic con-tribution from the Near East. To test these hypotheses, we obtained mtDNA sequences from 2,099 modern and ancient pig samples and 63 nuclear ancient genomes from Near Eastern and European pigs. Our analyses revealed that European domestic pigs dating from 7,100 to 6,000 y BP possessed both Near Eastern and European nuclear ancestry, while later pigs possessed no more than 4% Near Eastern ancestry, indicating that gene flow from European wild boars resulted in a near-complete disappearance of Near East ancestry. In addition, we demonstrate that a variant at a locus encoding black coat color likely originated in the Near East and persisted in European pigs. Altogether, our results indicate that while pigs were not independently domesticated in Europe, the vast majority of human-mediated selection over the past 5,000 y focused on the genomic fraction derived from the European wild boars, and not on the fraction that was selected by early Neolithic farmers over the first 2,500 y of the domestication process

The Oldowan horizon in Wonderwerk Cave (South Africa): archaeological, geological, paleontological and paleoclimatic evidence

Introduction In marked contrast to East Africa, where the emergence of stone tool technology (∼2.6 Ma) is well documented at a wide range of sites (Semaw, 2000; Schick and Toth, 2006; Hovers and Braun, 2009), the earliest stages of tool production are known from only a small number of localities in southern Africa, none of which is interpreted as representing primary contexts (Kuman, 1998; Schick and Toth, 2006). Here we provide the first comprehensive description of an in situ Oldowan deposit from basal Stratum 12 inside Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape Province, South Africa

Erratum: Ancient pigs reveal a near-complete genomic turnover following their introduction to Europe

The authors note that the affiliation for Alexandros Triantafyllidis and Panoraia Alexandri should be listed as Department of Genetics, Development and Molecular Biology, School of Biology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece; and that the affiliation for Rose-Marie Arbogast should be listed as CNRS UMR 7044, Maison interuniversitaire des sciences de l'Homme, F-67083 Strasbourg Cedex, France. The corrected author and affiliation lines appear below. The online version has been corrected.</p

"Ancient pigs reveal a near-complete genomic turnover following their introduction to Europe (vol 116, pg17231, 2019)

The authors note that the affiliation for Alexandros Triantafyllidis and Panoraia Alexandri should be listed as Department of Genetics, Development and Molecular Biology, School of Biology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece; and that the affiliation for Rose-Marie Arbogast should be listed as CNRS UMR 7044, Maison interuniversitaire des sciences de l'Homme, F-67083 Strasbourg Cedex, France. The corrected author and affiliation lines appear below. The online version has been corrected