Plio-Pleistocene mammalian biostratigraphy of Atlantic Morocco / Biostratigraphie des mammifères Plio-Pléistocènes du Maroc atlantique.

Abstract

The recent Moroccan-French cooperation programme has brought about the discovery and excavation of several nch sites in the area of Casablanca. The earliest of these is the newly discovered locality of Lissasfa, which is at least 5 Myr old, and shows that the «Quaternary» sequence of Atlantic Morocco is at least twice as long as previously thought. The other localities provide a biochronological frame for the North-African Upper Pliocene and Quaternary Ahl al Oughlam, dated to about 2.5 Myr, is one of the richest faunal localities in the whole African Cenozoic, but man had probably not arrived in North Africa at that time. In Thomas Quarry 1, the earliest archaeological level in Morocco, level L, is probably of lower Pleistocene age. In the same complex of quarries, the faunas of cave fillings, of which the Homo erectus level of Thomas 1 looks the oldest, can be grouped within a single faunal unit.