Homotherium from Middle Pleistocene archaeological and carnivore den sites of Germany – Taxonomy, taphonomy and a revision of the Schöningen, West Runton and other saber-tooth cat sites

Abstract

Abstract Four new saber-tooth cat ( Homotherium ) sites in Germany with new dental and postcranial bone material are different in their taphonomic context: 1. The Archaeological Middle Palaeolithic (MIS 9e-Interglacial) Schoningen Lake site with remains of a cub carcass, 2. The Middle Palaeolithic (MIS 5e-9) Archaeological/cave bear den site of Balve Cave yielding a lower canine tooth of an older individual, 3. The Zoolithen Cave (MIS 3–9) cave bear/hyena den with one distal half humerus of an adult, 4. The Ketsch open air Rhine River terrace site which has provided another distal humerus of an adult saber-tooth cat. Whereas only the Schoningen site is precisely dated as Holsteinian Interglacial (approx. 330.000–315.000 BP), all other material seems to come from the same Middle Pleistocene warm period, or few younger Saalian interstadials (MIS 7a, e) deposits, and did not extend over the last MIS 7 glacial into the Late Pleistocene. Homotherium as hyena-like slow moving cat seems to have disappeared within the Saalian due to competition with other scavengers like Ice Age spotted and brown hyenas ( Crocuta crocuta praespelaea/ultima and Pachycrocuta brunnea mosbachensis ). The juvenile saber-tooth cat cub from Schoningen might be in archaeological context or represent only a carnivore kill. At the Zoolithen Cave, the single bone must have been imported into a hyena prey bone assemblage. The situation is possibly similar at the two other sites Ketsch and Balve Cave. The formerly described Schoningen “saber-tooth cat” humerus is revised, such as other opposite as lion humeri described material from different European sites. The presence of the well-developed supracondylar ridge distinguishes Homotherium well from Middle/Late Pleistocene lions Panthera leo (e.g. spelaea, fossilis ). The Schoningen lion humrus has been chew-cut first most probably by a stripped hyena whose cutting scissor teeth produced a diagonal bite cut and P 4 /M 1 impact marks around the trochlea. 1–2 mm small, mostly triangular-oval bite marks on the lion humerus shaft compacta results from a second scavenger and not from “Neanderthal tool use”. Those bite mark sizes are produced mainly of the upper molar teeth of a the red wolf Cuon alpinus subsp. (or small fox Vulpes praecorsac ), which were present in the region within the Holsteinian/Saalian.