The Plio-Pleistocene sequence of Oued Boucherit (Algeria): A unique chronologically-constrained archaeological and palaeontological record in North Africa

Abstract

Located within the Beni Fouda intramontane basin, the Oued Boucherit area (Guelta Zerga, North East Algeria) hosts a unique succession of archaeological and palaeontological deposits spanning from the late Pliocene to the Early Pleistocene. While the recent work by Sahnouni et al., (2018) mostly focused on the two Oldowan archaeological levels AB-Lw and AB-Up, we present here an updated overview of the entire Oued Boucherit sequence, resulting from a long-term multidisciplinary investigation that started in 1992. In particular, we report for the first time a description of the oldest palaeontological levels dated to >3 Ma, and of the uppermost archaeological level hosting Acheulean artefacts. The age-depth model initially proposed by Sahnouni et al. (2018) was further extended to chronologically constrain the whole sequence, which spans from ∼3.93 Ma at the bottom to ∼1.65 Ma at the top.