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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2023

Fossil evidence of a death trap at Ozombindi, Northwestern Namibia.

Helke Mocke
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Brigitte Senut
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Martin Pickford

Résumé

The Kaokoland is located in the Kunene Region of northwestern Namibia. The area preserves travertine and tufa deposits associated with springs. Small caves developed in some of these deposits in which skeletal remains accumulated (and stone tools in some) that are good indicators that at times, past environments and climates were cooler and more humid than they are today. Palaeontological expeditions to Kaokoland in the early 1990s reported on Plio-Pleistocene fossils from several localities. In more recent year’s plant impressions at Ongongo Springs near Sesfontein were reported, as well as diverse micromammal faunas and invertebrates from several sites such as Otjikondovirongo, Otjitaime, Okongwe (previously called Okozonduno) and Omatapati. Preparation of a sample from the Okongwe cascade tufa yielded the extinct Pliocene rodent Stenodontomys, originally described from the Middle Pliocene of Makapansgat and subsequently reported from the Late Miocene - Early Pliocene of Langebaanweg in South Africa, which suggests that the deposit is likely to be Pliocene or older. In 2022 a cascade tufa complex named Ozombindi by the Ovahimba, situated 80 km northwest of the town of Opuwo, was reported. The site preserves four areas of randomly orientated leg bones and jaws of large mammals in a breccia infilling a former cavity or fissure in cascade tufa. Provisional identifications based on visual observations of teeth suggest the presence of large reedbuck, wildebeest, eland, gemsbok, equids (possibly Equus capensis), rhino and hyaenid specimens. The previously described sites in Kaokoland yielded mostly micromammal nd invertebrate fossils and plants. However, the Ozombindi site preserves only large mammal remains, the taphonomy of which suggests that animals fell into a collapse hole and were unable to escape, resulting in their death. Two specimens in the bone breccia, which belong to a hyaena, were found amongst the limb bones of the large bovids and zebras, suggesting that the cavity may have served as a death trap to carnivores as well, which entered it to feast on the trapped herbivores but were unable to get out again. The occurrence of a giant reedbuck, Redunca darti indicates an age range of late Pliocene to early Pleistocene for Ozombindi, as fossils of this extinct bovid have been reported from Makapansgat in South Africa and Ekuma River, Etosha National Park, Namibia.

Domaines

Paléontologie
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Dates et versions

hal-04230669 , version 1 (06-10-2023)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-04230669 , version 1

Citer

Helke Mocke, Brigitte Senut, Martin Pickford, Dominique Gommery. Fossil evidence of a death trap at Ozombindi, Northwestern Namibia.. 29th Colloqium of African Geology, “The earth sciences and Africa’s development: current realities, future projections”, Sep 2023, Windhoek, Namibia. pp.28-29. ⟨hal-04230669⟩
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