Iván Ramírez Pedraza defended her doctoral thesis "Multiproxy Reconstruction of the Ecological Context of the Plio-Pleistocene Transition and Early Middle Pleistocene in Morocco"

This morning, in the Abric Romaní room of the IPHES-CERCA and within the framework of the Doctoral Program in Quaternary and Prehistory of the Rovira i Virgili University, the defense act of the Doctoral Thesis "Multiproxy Reconstruction of the Ecological Context of the Plio-Pleistocene Transition and Early Middle Pleistocene in Morocco” by Iván Ramírez Pedraza.

The thesis, directed by Dr. Florent Rivals, ICREA researcher at IPHES-CERCA and by Dr. Carlos Tornero, professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and researcher associated with IPHES-CERCA.

All the IPHES-CERCA team would like to congratulate the new doctor!!!

Summary of the Doctoral Thesis:

The discovery of archaeological sites with hominin presence dated to the Early Pleistocene to the Middle Pleistocene has conferred a significant role to North Africa, especially Morocco and Algeria, integrating this territory into the global discussions of human evolution alongside eastern and southern Africa. A better understanding of the dynamics of the Green Sahara Events has allowed the identification of multiple humid episodes that could have favoured the dispersal of various species, including hominins. However, despite this diachronic occupation of the Maghreb area, there is limited knowledge about the ecological context in which these different occupations occurred.

For this thesis, various archaeological and palaeontological sites in Morocco dated to the Plio-Pleistocene transition (Guefaït-4.2 and Ahl al Oughlam) and to the early Middle Pleistocene (Oued Rabt, Grotte à Hominidés, and Grotte des Rhinocéros) have been selected, located, on the one hand, on the Atlantic coast of the present-day city of Casablanca (western Morocco), and the other hand, in the Maghreb depression of the Intra-Atlas in the Aïn Beni Mathar – Guefaït basin (eastern Morocco). This work aims to reconstruct the landscape of these sites and their surroundings and to characterise the diet of the large vertebrates.

To achieve this, different methods with different temporal resolutions have been used: dental microwear (buccal and occlusal surfaces), dental mesowear, analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes in the dental enamel of mammals (bulk and sequential analysis of the crown), and finally, isotopic analysis of carbon of n-alkane chains found in plant waxes recovered from sediments.

Overall, the results indicate a predominantly arid environment in both the Plio-Pleistocene transition sites and those of the early Middle Pleistocene. On the Atlantic coast, the data show a similar pattern between 2.5, 0.77, 0.7 and 0.5 million years, with a predominance of open spaces dominated by C3 grasslands and shrubs, where forested environments might be very residual. The type of landscape and climate are similar regardless of whether hominins are present. In eastern Morocco, during the Plio-Pleistocene, the defined landscape is much more diverse, including forests, wetlands, shrubs, and C3 and C4 grasslands. Considering that Guefaït-4.2 is relatively close in distance and chronology to Ain Boucherit, the oldest site with human presence in the Maghreb, we hypothesise that this diversity of habitats and resources could have favoured the occupation of the first hominins in northern Africa.