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  • A taxonomic and taphonomic study of Pleistocene fossil deposits from the western Nefud Desert, Saudi Arabia

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    Author(s)
    Stewart, Mathew
    Louys, Julien
    Breeze, Paul
    Clark-Wilson, Richard
    Drake, Nick
    Scerri, Eleanor ML
    Zalmout, Iyad S
    Al-Mufarreh, Yahya SA
    Soubhi, Saleh A
    Haptari, Mohammad A
    Alsharekh, Abdullah M
    Groucutt, Huw S
    Petraglia, Michael D
    Griffith University Author(s)
    Louys, Julien
    Petraglia, Michael
    Year published
    2020
    Metadata
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    Abstract
    Over the past decade, a growing interest has developed on the archaeology, palaeontology, and palaeoenvironments of the Arabian Peninsula. It is now clear that hominins repeatedly dispersed into Arabia, notably during pluvial interglacial periods when much of the peninsula was characterised by a semiarid grassland environment. During the intervening glacial phases, however, grasslands were replaced with arid and hyperarid deserts. These millennial-scale climatic fluctuations have subjected bones and fossils to a dramatic suite of environmental conditions, affecting their fossilisation and preservation. Yet, as relatively few ...
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    Over the past decade, a growing interest has developed on the archaeology, palaeontology, and palaeoenvironments of the Arabian Peninsula. It is now clear that hominins repeatedly dispersed into Arabia, notably during pluvial interglacial periods when much of the peninsula was characterised by a semiarid grassland environment. During the intervening glacial phases, however, grasslands were replaced with arid and hyperarid deserts. These millennial-scale climatic fluctuations have subjected bones and fossils to a dramatic suite of environmental conditions, affecting their fossilisation and preservation. Yet, as relatively few palaeontological assemblages have been reported from the Pleistocene of Arabia, our understanding of the preservational pathways that skeletal elements can take in these types of environments is lacking. Here, we report the first widespread taxonomic and taphonomic assessment of Arabian fossil deposits. Novel fossil fauna are described and overall the fauna are consistent with a well-watered semiarid grassland environment. Likewise, the taphonomic results suggest that bones were deposited under more humid conditions than present in the region today. However, fossils often exhibit significant attrition, obscuring and fragmenting most finds. These are likely tied to wind abrasion, insolation, and salt weathering following fossilisation and exhumation, processes particularly prevalent in desert environments.
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    Journal Title
    Quaternary Research
    Volume
    95
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.1017/qua.2020.6
    Copyright Statement
    © University of Washington. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2020. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
    Subject
    Geology
    Physical geography and environmental geoscience
    Archaeology
    Science & Technology
    Physical Sciences
    Geography, Physical
    Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/396327
    Collection
    • Journal articles

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