Abstract
ABSTRACTThis paper describes a large collection of Quaternary fossil fauna from the Luangwa Rift Valley, Zambia. Stone Age artefacts have been recovered from stratified fluvial contexts, but no in situ fossil faunas have yet been recovered. We report on 500 fossil specimens collected from the surface of point bars exposed seasonally along the banks of the main Luangwa River channel. We used non‐destructive X‐ray fluorescence analysis of the fossils' chemical signatures to determine whether they derive from one or many primary contexts, and the relationship between chemical signature and state of preservation. Specimens are identified to taxon (genus) to reconstruct palaeoenvironments and biochronology. A relatively wide range of taxa is identified, including a fossil hominin talus, described here. None of the fossils is positively attributable to extinct species, except a femur of an extinct Theropithecus reported in 2003. Although no additional extinct taxa were identified, some of the remains were attributable to genera that are not currently found in this region. The results suggest that most of the assemblage derives from sediments which are Middle Pleistocene or later, and that past environments in the Luangwa Valley may have differed from the habitat availability found today.
Highlights
The Luangwa Valley of eastern Zambia is an extension of the East Africa Rift System (EARS) (Fig. 1a), but it lacks the tectonic activity that has been critical for the preservation, exposure and dating of palaeoanthropological sites along the eastern arm of the rift from Tanzania northwards (Barham and Mitchell, 2008)
The bones all exhibit signs of rolling; they vary from almost fresh in appearance with fractured surfaces showing slight damage, to highly rounded, polished and smoothed. This is unsurprising given that all faunal remains studied had been recovered from the seasonal point bars within and near the river channel, but the wide range of damage from rolling may signify that they derived from a range of contexts and distances from their ultimate place of recovery
Analysis of just modern human tali reinforces this result by showing that the Zambian specimen clusters comfortably with those of modern populations from southern Africa (Fig. 6). This demonstrates that the talus, like the vast majority of the fauna from the Luangwa River localities, is likely to represent an extant taxon, it must be noted that most Middle– Late Pleistocene Homo tali are very similar to that of H. sapiens (Harcourt-Smith, 2002)
Summary
The Luangwa Valley of eastern Zambia is an extension of the East Africa Rift System (EARS) (Fig. 1a), but it lacks the tectonic activity that has been critical for the preservation, exposure and dating of palaeoanthropological sites along the eastern arm of the rift from Tanzania northwards (Barham and Mitchell, 2008). The bones all exhibit signs of rolling; they vary from almost fresh in appearance with fractured surfaces showing slight damage, to highly rounded, polished and smoothed This is unsurprising given that all faunal remains studied had been recovered from the seasonal point bars within and near the river channel, but the wide range of damage from rolling may signify that they derived from a range of contexts and distances from their ultimate place of recovery. Analysis of just modern human tali reinforces this result by showing that the Zambian specimen clusters comfortably with those of modern populations from southern Africa (Fig. 6) This demonstrates that the talus, like the vast majority of the fauna from the Luangwa River localities, is likely to represent an extant taxon, it must be noted that most Middle– Late Pleistocene Homo tali are very similar to that of H. sapiens (Harcourt-Smith, 2002). The emerging chronology of the Luangwa Valley deposits currently spans the past 1.1 Ma, supporting a Middle Pleistocene or more recent age for much of the fauna recovered
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