Archeologists commonly suppose that among complex projectile weapons humans use as subsistence aids, the spearthrower-and-dart preceded bow-and-arrow use. And yet, neither ethnographic nor archeological records furnish any robust evidence for spearthrower-and-dart use in Africa. Instead, evidence grows apace for ever-more ancient bow-and-arrow use. Here we explore these findings and their implications for models of early Homo sapiens behavior.
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Sci Rep
January 2025
Geochronology and Tracers Facility, British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottingham, NG12 5GG, UK.
Loess profiles along the Danube River provide a record of long-term Quaternary dust (loess) deposition in central-eastern Europe. Here, Sr-Nd isotopic data from four loess-palaeosol profiles (47 samples) spanning the last two-glacial-interglacial cycles are presented. The isotopic compositions generated by this study are compared with bedrock and sedimentary samples from Europe and North Africa to decipher the sources of sediment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEcol Lett
January 2025
Department of Anthropology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
Modern African ungulates navigate seasonal variation in resource availability through diet-switching (primarily mixed-feeders) and/or migrating (primarily grass grazers). These ecological generalisations are well-documented today, but the extent to which they apply to the non-analog ecosystems of the Pleistocene are unclear. Drawing from serially-sampled stable isotope measurements from 18 Kenyan large herbivore species from the Last Glacial Period (LGP), we evaluate how diet, diet-switching, and migration compare to observations from present-day settings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEvolution
December 2024
Section of Ecology and Evolution, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
An important goal of comparative and functional genomics is to connect genetic polymorphisms to phenotypic variation. Leopards (Panthera pardus) from northern South Africa are particularly diverse, as here a unique colour morph occurs, as well as two deeply diverged southern (SA) and central African (CA) mitochondrial clades, stemming from Pleistocene refugia. Here, we present the first whole genomes of a red leopard and a black (captive) leopard, and wildtypes belonging to the CA and SA mitochondrial clades, to evaluate genome-wide diversity, divergence, and high impact mutations that may relate to their phenotype.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMol Phylogenet Evol
November 2024
Department of Botany, University of Innsbruck, Sternwartestr. 15, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria. Electronic address:
Evol Anthropol
December 2024
Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
A debate has developed with regard to geological ages of hominin fossils attributed to Australopithecus africanus and Australopithecus prometheus in South African Plio-Pleistocene cave deposits. For the Sterkfontein caves (Members 2 and 4), cosmogenic nuclide isochron (Be/Al) dating has yielded age estimates ranging from 3.4 to 3.
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