CFEE JOINT SEMINAR

Evolution: an international research seminar in eastern Africa

Paleobiodiversity, paleobiology, prehistory, paleoenvironments

 
with

the Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage

Jean-Philip BRUGAL

(CNRS, IFRA Nairobi

During the Plio-Pleistocene, the carnivore guilds were much diversified and some of the species had a very large spatial distribution through Eurasia and Africa. Carnivores, as meat-eaters, play important roles within the ecosystems. The knowledge of predator communities, modern and fossil, brings essential inputs about paleoecology, paleoenvironment, taphonomy, and archaeology.

Five carnivore families (Ursidae, Felidae, Hyaenidae, Canidae, Mustelidae), including 25 genus, are contemporaneous of Palaeolithic humans in western Europe. They cover a wide chronological frame, as well as several size and diet classes. Most of these species still exists nowadays in Africa and some of their morphologic and eco-ethologic features are useful for the reconstruction of the past carnivore guilds.

An important feature of hominid evolution is the introduction of meat in their diet, as well as the making of stone-tools. Carnivores and humans are in some cases both accumulators and modifiers of bone assemblages. They are in competition for their subsistence because they hunted the same herbivorous communities and because of their need for similar shelters such as caves (for resting or reproductive purposes). Hyaenids were especially involved in this competition, and some examples from this group will be given, stressing for European and African study inter plays.

Jean-Philip Brugal is paleontologist and zooarchaeologist at the CNRS, working at the French Institute for Research in Africa in Nairobi (USR 3336 MEAE/CNRS, Kenya) and at Lampea of Aix-en-Provence (UMR 7269 CNRS, France). He is one of the investigator of the West Turkana Archaeological Project, and direct a European network in taphonomy.