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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2019

Feeding ecology of European Early Pleistocene Deer: what does it tell about the paleoenvironmental context early Homo faced in Europe?

Résumé

Due to their taxonomic diversity and marked abundance, cervids represent a major component of the European terrestrial fauna during the Early Pleistocene. In paleoenvironmental reconstructions, deer are traditionally considered as forest inhabitants, witnessing a substantial tree cover. However, insights into extant deer ecology uncover a marked diversity of feeding behaviors and occupied habitats. For example, Cervus elaphus is present from the arid Spanish dehesas, consuming up to 95% of herbaceous monocotyledons, to the Polish primeval forests, behaving there as a browser. The plasticity of Cervus elaphus feeding behavior reflects the principal resources available in the habitat. Exploring the trophic plasticity of extinct eurytopic cervids hence constitutes a key to better apprehend paleoenvironments and paleoenvironmental variations through time. By reflecting what has eaten an animal during the last few days or weeks of its life, dental microwear textures of herbivores constitute a bridge between an organism and its environment. extures of 211 specimens of Eucladoceros ctenoides and 176 Metacervoceros rhenanus from 11 Early Pleistocene European localities were analyzed using a Dental Microwear Texture Analysis via Scale Sensitive Fractal Analysis. Results illustrate the diversity of the resources these two taxa are able to consume: either dicot foliage, seeds or tough and abrasive monocots. These Early Pleistocene deer are therefore eurytopic and constitute appropriate proxies to track vegetal resource availability in paleoenvironments. For some localities, our results corroborate previous paleoenvironmental interpretations. For others, it brings new perspectives. Senèze (MNQ 18, France) for example, was previously considered as a mosaic habitat based on the co-occurrence of cervids and bovids in the fossil record. Alternatively, our results show that Senèze deer were engaged in grazing, indicating a much more opened habitat than previously considered. For both deer, similar oscillations through time were identified between a browsing and a grazing pole. We propose that these results witness vegetation changes from steppe-like to wooded conditions induced by the Early Pleistocene glacial interglacial oscillations. This large scale work challenges the paradigm considering deer as a paleoenvironmental indicator of an important tree cover and therefore modifies our vision of the paleoenvironments of several European Early Pleistocene localities. This approach impacts our understanding of the paleoenvironmental context of Early Pleistocene Homo dispersion.
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hal-03908640 , version 1 (20-12-2022)

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  • HAL Id : hal-03908640 , version 1

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Emilie Berlioz, Dimitris S Kostopoulos, Cécile Blondel, Gildas Merceron. Feeding ecology of European Early Pleistocene Deer: what does it tell about the paleoenvironmental context early Homo faced in Europe?. 20th Congress of the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA) 2019, International Union for Quaternary Research, Jul 2019, Dublin, Ireland. ⟨hal-03908640⟩
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