Kinematics and spatiotemporal parameters of infant-carrying in olive baboons.

In the field of biomechanics of quadrupedal locomotion in primates, infant-carrying has received little attention. This study presents the first biomechanical study of infant-carrying in captive female olive baboons (Papio anubis). We test whether females carrying infants conform 1) to the Support Polygon Model (Rollinson and Martin: Symp Zool Soc Lond 48 (1981) 377-427) of gait selection, according to which diagonality should decrease when the infant is carried cranially and increase when the infant is carried dorsally and caudally; 2) to Biewener's (Biewener: Science 245 () 45-48) theory of limb postures, according to which females should extend their hind limbs more due to infant load, especially in the later stages when the infant is not fully autonomous but relatively heavy. This study focuses on the sagittal kinematics of quadrupedal gaits (joint angles and spatiotemporal parameters) of four females with and without infant loads at the CNRS Primatology Station (France). High-speed video recordings were made using the technical platform "Motion Analysis of Primates" available in the animals' place of life. Regarding diagonality, our results do not fully conform to those predicted by the Support Polygon Model of gait selection; however, the model cannot be rejected at this stage in experiment. With regard to limb posture, our results do not support Biewener's (Biewener: Science 245 () 45-48) theory: loaded females do not extend their hind limbs more as predicted; on the contrary, the hind limbs tend to be more flexed when the infant they carry is relatively heavy.

Discovery of new open-air Paleolithic localities in Central Alborz, Northern Iran.

The cooperative French-Iranian Paleoanthropological Project (FIPP) discovered three Paleolithic localities in Central Alborz, Northern Iran during its 2005 field mission. In the northern foothills near Baliran in Mazandârân province, Garm Roud yielded an open-air site with an archaeological layer attributable to the last glacial period that dates from the end of OIS 3 (28,486+/-190 cal BP). These geochronological data and the typo-technical observations converge to place the Garm Roud 2 assemblage in the Upper Paleolithic. Garm Roud 2 is thus the first site of this kind discovered in the area. In the southern foothills near Damâvand in Tehran province, Moghanak and Otchounak represent two open-air surface localities with lithic assemblages of Mousterian to Ante-Mousterian affinity. Garm Roud, Moghanak, and Otchounak provide some of the first direct field evidence of early human settlements in this central area of the Middle East.