Revisiting the ESR chronology of the Early Pleistocene hominin occupation at Vallparadís (Barcelona, Spain)

Abstract

ESR dating was applied to fossil teeth and optically bleached quartz grain samples from two units of the sequence at Vallparadís (Barcelona, Spain): weighted mean ESR age estimates of 858 ± 87 ka and 849 ± 48 ka were obtained for EVT-7, which includes the archaeological level 10, and EVT-8, respectively. These results are in good agreement with the existing magneto-biostratigraphic framework that constrain these deposits between 780 and 990 ka, and indicate that Vallparadís EVT-7 has a chronology very close to that of Atapuerca Gran Dolina TD-6 (Spain).