RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 Carrying Capacity, Available Meat and the Fossil Record of the Orce Sites (Baza Basin, Spain)
A1 Rodríguez Gómez, Guillermo
A1 Espigares, María Patrocinio
A1 Martínez Navarro, Bienvenido
A1 Ros Montoya, Sergio
A1 Guerra Merchán, Antonio
A1 Martín González, Jesús Ángel
A1 Campaña, Isidoro
A1 Pérez Ramos, Alejandro
A1 Granados, Alejandro
A1 García Aguilar, José Manuel
A1 Rodríguez Ruiz, María Dolores
A1 Palmqvist, Paul
K1 Prey biomass
K1 Large mammals
K1 Taphonomy
K1 Early pleistocene
K1 Western Europe
K1 Venta Micena
K1 Fuente Nueva 3
K1 Barranco León
K1 Paleontología
K1 Paleontology
K1 Arqueología
K1 Archaeology
AB The Early Pleistocene sites of Orce in southeastern Spain, including Fuente Nueva-3 (FN3),Barranco León (BL) and Venta Micena (VM), provide important insights into the earliest homininpopulations and Late Villafranchian large mammal communities. Dated to approximately 1.4 millionyears ago, FN3 and BL preserve abundant Oldowan tools, cut marks and a human primary tooth,indicating hominin activity. VM, approximately 1.6 million years old, is an outstanding site because itpreserves an exceptionally rich assemblage of large mammals and predates the presence of hominins,providing a context for pre-human conditions in the region. Research suggests that both hominins andgiant hyenas were essential to the accumulation of skeletal remains at FN3 and BL, with secondaryaccess to meat resources exploited by saber-toothed felids. This aim of this study aims to correlate therelative abundance of large herbivores at these sites with their estimates of Carrying Capacity (CC)and Total Available Biomass (TAB) using the PSEco model, which incorporates survival and mortalityprofiles to estimate these parameters in paleoecosystems. Our results show: (i) similarities betweenquarries VM3 and VM4 and (ii) similarities of these quarries with BL-D (level D), suggesting a similarformation process; (iii) that the role of humans would be secondary in BL-D and FN3-LAL (LowerArchaeological Level), although with a greater human influence in FN3-LAL due to the greaterpresence of horses and small species; and (iv) that FN3-UAL (Upper Archaeological Level) showssimilarities with the expected CC values for FN3/BL, consistent with a natural trap of quicksandscenario, where the large mammal species were trapped according to their abundance and bodymass, as there is a greater presence of rhinos and mammoths due to the greater weight per unit areaexerted by their legs. Given the usefulness of this approach, we propose to apply it first to sites thathave been proposed to function as natural traps.
PB MDPI
YR 2024
FD 2024-08
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10259/10454
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10259/10454
LA eng
NO Funding for this research has been provided by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and University (Refs.: CGL2016-78577-P, CGL2016-80975-P, PGC2018-093925-B-C31, PGC2018-093925-B-C33, PID2019-111185GB-I00, PID2021-122355NB-C31), Junta de Andalucía (Refs: UMA18-FEDERJA-188, P18-FR-3193), Generalitat de Catalunya (Ref.: 2021SGR 01238 (AGAUR)), Universidad de Málaga (Refs.: B1-2022_13, B1-2020_24) and by research group RNM-146 of Junta de Andalucía. This research has been authorized by the Consejería de Cultura of the Junta de Andalucía. G. Rodríguez-Gómez enjoys a postdoctoral contract “Atracción de Talento Investigador César Nombela” (Ref. 2023-T1/PH-HUM-29222) co-funded by the Comunidad de Madrid and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. I. Campaña and A. Pérez-Ramos are beneficiaries of posdoctoral grants from Junta de Andalucía. This work has also been supported by the Madrid Government (Comunidad de Madrid-Spain) under the Multiannual Agreement with Universidad Complutense de Madrid in the line Research Incentive for Young PhDs, in the context of the V PRICIT (Regional Programme of Research and Technological Innovation) (Ref. PR27/21–004).
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Burgos
RD 10-may-2025