Combined uranium-series and electron spin resonance dating from the Pliocene fossil sites of Aves and Milo's palaeocaves, Bolt's Farm, Cradle of Humankind, South Africa.

Bolt's Farm is the name given to a series of non-hominin bearing fossil sites that have often been suggested to be some of the oldest Pliocene sites in the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa. This article reports the results of the first combined Uranium-Series and Electron Spin Resonance (US-ESR) dating of bovid teeth at Milo's Cave and Aves Cave at Bolt's Farm. Both tooth enamel fragments and tooth enamel powder ages were presented for comparison. US-ESR, EU and LU models are calculated. Overall, the powder ages are consistent with previous uranium-lead and palaeomagnetic age estimates for the Aves Cave deposit, which suggest an age between ~3.15 and 2.61 Ma and provide the first ages for Milo's Cave dates to between ~3.1 and 2.7 Ma. The final ages were not overly dependent on the models used (US-ESR, LU or EU), which all overlap within error. These ages are all consistent with the biochronological age estimate (<3.4->2.6 Ma) based on the occurrence of Stage I Metridiochoerus andrewsi. Preliminary palaeomagnetic analysis from Milo's Cave indicates a reversal takes place at the site with predominantly intermediate directions, suggesting the deposit may date to the period between ~3.03 and 3.11 Ma within error of the ESR ages. This further suggests that there are no definitive examples of palaeocave deposits at Bolt's Farm older than 3.2 Ma. This research indicates that US-ESR dating has the potential to date fossil sites in the Cradle of Humankind to over 3 Ma. However, bulk sample analysis for US-ESR dating is recommended for sites over 3 Ma.

New Oldowan locality Sare-Abururu (ca. 1.7 Ma) provides evidence of diverse hominin behaviors on the Homa Peninsula, Kenya.

The Homa Peninsula, in southwestern Kenya, continues to yield insights into Oldowan hominin landscape behaviors. The Late Pliocene locality of Nyayanga (∼3-2.6 Ma) preserves some of the oldest Oldowan tools. At the Early Pleistocene locality of Kanjera South (∼2 Ma) toolmakers procured a diversity of raw materials from over 10 km away and strategically reduced them in a grassland-dominated ecosystem. Here, we report findings from Sare-Abururu, a younger (∼1.7 Ma) Oldowan locality approximately 12 km southeast of Kanjera South and 18 km east of Nyayanga. Sare-Abururu has yielded 1754 artifacts in relatively undisturbed low-energy silts and sands. Stable isotopic analysis of pedogenic carbonates suggests that hominin activities were carried out in a grassland-dominated setting with similar vegetation structure as documented at Kanjera South. The composition of a nearby paleo-conglomerate indicates that high-quality stone raw materials were locally abundant. Toolmakers at Sare-Abururu produced angular fragments from quartz pebbles, representing a considerable contrast to the strategies used to reduce high quality raw materials at Kanjera South. Although lithic reduction at Sare-Abururu was technologically simple, toolmakers proficiently produced cutting edges, made few mistakes and exhibited a mastery of platform management, demonstrating that expedient technical strategies do not necessarily indicate a lack of skill or suitable raw materials. Lithic procurement and reduction patterns on the Homa Peninsula appear to reflect variation in local resource contexts rather than large-scale evolutionary changes in mobility, energy budget, or toolmaker cognition.

A lineage perspective on hominin taxonomy and evolution.

An uncritical reliance on the phylogenetic species concept has led paleoanthropologists to become increasingly typological in their delimitation of new species in the hominin fossil record. As a practical matter, this approach identifies species as diagnosably distinct groups of fossils that share a unique suite of morphological characters but, ontologically, a species is a metapopulation lineage segment that extends from initial divergence to eventual extinction or subsequent speciation. Working from first principles of species concept theory, it is clear that a reliance on morphological diagnosabilty will systematically overestimate species diversity in the fossil record; because morphology can evolve within a lineage segment, it follows that early and late populations of the same species can be diagnosably distinct from each other. We suggest that a combination of morphology and chronology provides a more robust test of the single-species null hypothesis than morphology alone.