Palaeontologia africana
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/13253
ISSN (print): 0078-8554
ISSN (electronic): 2410-4418
For queries regarding content of Palaeontologia africana collections please contact Jonah Choiniere by email : jonah.choiniere@wits.ac.za or Tel : 011 717 6684
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Item Palaeo-ecology of the Sterkfontein hominids: a review and synthesis(Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, 1991) McKee, Jeffrey KExcavations at the Sterkfontein hominid fossil site have yielded a rich and revealing faunal assemblage. Evolutionary transitions are evident in early hominids and associated fauna between the times represented by Members 4 and 5. Member 4 has yielded a large and variable sample of Australopithecus africanus as well as evidence of considerable species diversity among the artiodactyls, carnivores and primates. The appearance of early Homo along with stone and bone tools in Member 5 coincides with a reduction of species representation in the orders of larger mammals as well as with the occurrence of new derived species and apparent extinctions. Three hypotheses have been suggested to account for the trends seen in the hominid-bearing members of the Sterkfontein Formation. The 'Climatic Change Hypothesis' accounts for the evolutionary trends by the causal factors of global and local cooling and aridification with evidence of savanna-grasslands supplanting an earlier environment with a denser cover of vegetation. The 'Taphonomic Hypothesis' explains changes in relative species representation at Sterkfontein in terms of the bone-accumulating agents; in Member 4 primary carnivores were largely responsible for the deposition of large mammalian fauna, whereas the scavenging activities of early Homo would have accounted for much of the bone and all of the artefacts found in Member 5. A third proposition is the 'Species Interaction Hypothesis', a derivative of the ' Red-Queen Hypothesis'; here the dynamics of species interaction, including competition and commensalism among hominids, carnivores and cercopithecids, propel the evolutionary changes and cause the extinctions. These hypotheses are not mutually exclusive, but the relative effects of the factors involved must be verified or refuted with better chronological controls and further analyses of the African fossil sites. The Sterkfontein Formation represents a microcosm in which various scenarios of African mammalian evolution can be tested.Item The palaeontology of Haasgat a preliminary account(Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, 1991) Keyser, Andre WHaasgat is a cave on the steep western slope of the upper reach of the Witwatersrand Spruit, on the farm Leeuwenkloof 480 lQ, in the Brits District. It was heavily mined for flowstone (calcite). The cave contains a deposit offossiliferous cave silt and breccia that was partially removed by the miners and dumped on the steep slopes of the valley. The original entrance was probably a shallow inclined pit, leading into an upper chamber and then into the preserved depository. Both porcupines and carnivores served as accumulating agents for the bones. Fossils of the primates Parapapio and Cercopifhecoides, hyaena (Chasmaporthetes), fox, porcupines, several species of bovids and two species of Hyrax have been recovered. An insufficient number of fossils have been prepared to determine the age of the deposit with certainty. The deposit was provisionally thought to be of Pliocene age because of the occurrence of Parapapio. At this stage it would be unwise to correlate this occurrence with any other caves in this age range. It is concluded that the cave silts were deposited by flash floods, under a wetter climatic regime than that of the present.Item Carnivore activity at Klasies River Mouth: a response to Binford(Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, 1990) Thackeray, J FrancisEnvironmental and behavioural factors contributed to variability in the relative abundance of Raphicerus (grysbok/steenbok) represented in Late Pleistocene and Holocene deposits at the complex of caves at Klasies River Mouth and at Nelson Bay Cave in the southern Cape Province, South Africa. Binford has used the relative abundance of Raphicerus in an index assumed to measure the degree of hunting by Middle Stone Age hominids. However, the occurrence of relatively high numbers of Raphicerus with leopards and baboons in some layers is likely to have been associated, at least in part, with leopard activity, particularly at times when relatively large ungulates were not common in the palaeoenvironment and when the cave sites were not frequently occupied by hominids with control over fire. Binford's indices are re-assessed in the light of other indices which are designed to identify assemblages that have a relatively high probability of having been accumulated by leopards and/or other carnivores.