Late Pleistocene Crocuta crocuta spelaea (Goldfuss 1823) populations from the Emscher River terrace open air hyena den near Bottrop and other sites in NW Germany: Their bone accumulations along rivers in lowland mammoth steppe environments and scavenging activities on woolly rhinoceros

Abstract

Crocuta crocuta spelaea (Goldfuss, 1823) remains (NISP = 50) are present in the early to middle Upper Pleistocene Emscher River terrace open air den site along the Rhine–Herne Canal near Bottrop (Westphalia, NW Germany). The population includes bones from cubs and bones with pathological features from old animals but is predominantly made up of adult hyenas (NISP = 3820) found within the glacial mammoth steppe fauna of the Münsterland Bay Lowlands. A larger quantity of woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) bones (NISP = 1601) are present than in other bone-rich open air hyena den sites, of which about 67% are damaged. This damage can be shown to have resulted mainly from hyena activities, and shows repetitions of the same three stages of destruction on the massive woolly rhinoceros bones. Those bone shafts that the hyenas were unable to break were left with irregular jagged margins. The taphonomy of bones from the Bottrop open air site indicates that the rhinoceros body parts had only been transported over short distances, in contrast to those from the Perick Caves hyena den where longer transport distances resulted in a higher proportion of limbs compared to other body parts. The large woolly rhinoceros was an important second megafauna prey for hyenas in the lowland areas (after the woolly mammoth), in contrast to the nearby Sauerland Karst mountain areas that are rich in hyena dens and their associated bone assemblages, although the higher proportions of rhinoceros bones present is also to some extent a result of the incomplete destruction of their massive bones. The proportions of woolly mammoth and woolly rhinoceros remains in the hyena prey bone assemblages gradually decrease from the lowlands towards the nearby Sauerland Karst mountain regions. In these mountainous boreal forest regions cave bears were instead the main food source for hyenas, as result of the scarcity or absence of mammoth steppe fauna. The large bone accumulations along the Emscher River terraces near Bottrop can mostly be attributed to the activities of hyenas, which were responsible for the repeated incomplete state of bone preservation. The bone accumulations are predominantly of leg bones and include a relatively high proportion of hyena bones which, together with the faunal composition and the size of the accumulations, indicate a mixed long-term use of the terraces along the Emscher River as an extensive communal hyena den and prey storage site, and also probably somewhere in the area, as a birth den. Some of the bone material may also have been accumulated by natural processes, or even by Neanderthals.