RT Journal Article
T1 Aurochs roamed along the SW coast of Andalusia (Spain) during Late Pleistocene
A1 Neto de Carvalho, Carlos
A1 Cáceres Puro, Luis Miguel
A1 Rodríguez Vidal, Joaquín
A1 Gómez Gutiérrez, Paula
A1 Toscano Grande, Antonio
A1 Ruiz Muñoz, Francisco
A1 Ramírez Cruzado, Samuel
A1 Finlayson, Clive
AB In the Iberian Peninsula the fossil record of artiodactyls spans over 53 million years. During the Pleistocene, wild cattle species such as Bison and especially Bos became common. In Late Pleistocene, the aurochs (Bos primigenius) was widespread and the only bovine living along the large river valleys of southern Iberia. Although commonly found in fossil sites and especially in cave bone assemblages, the trace fossil record of aurochs was known worldwide only from the Holocene. Large bovine and roe deer/caprine tracks were found in at least five horizons of the early Late Pleistocene (MIS 5) beach and eolian deposits of Cape Trafalgar (Cadiz Province, South of Spain). The large bovine tracks are formally described as Bovinichnus uripeda igen. et isp. nov. and compared with the record of aurochs tracks, large red deer tracks and steppe bison biogeographical distribution in Iberia. Aurochs were the most likely producers of the newly described Trafalgar Trampled Surface (TTS) and some of the large artiodactyl tracks in the Matalascañas Trampled Surface, representing the oldest aurochs track record known. This new evidence, together with comparisons with the record of possible aurochs tracks in the Mid-Late Pleistocene coastal deposits from the Asperillo cliff section in Matalascañas (Huelva Province, SW Spain) and bone assemblages known in Gibraltar, point to a recurrent use of the coastal habitat by these large artiodactyls in SW Iberia.
PB Springer
SN 2045-2322 (electrónico)
YR 2022
FD 2022
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10272/21947
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10272/21947
LA eng
NO De Carvalho, C. N., Muñiz, F., Cáceres, L. M., Belaústegui, Z., Rodríguez-Vidal, J., Belo, J., Moreira, N., Cachão, M., Cunha, P. P., Figueiredo, S., Galán, J. M., Zhang, Y., Gómez, P., Toscano, A., Ruiz, F., Ramírez-Cruzado, S., Giles-Guzmán, F., Finlayson, G., Finlayson, S., & Finlayson, C. (2022). Aurochs roamed along the SW coast of Andalusia (Spain) during Late Pleistocene. In Scientific Reports (Vol. 12, Issue 1). Springer Science and Business Media LLC. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-14137-6
NO Fieldwork was partially supported by the Research Groups RNM-293, University of Huelva & Junta de Andalucíaand Naturtejo, E.I.M., to CNC. Research work of SF is supported by the FCT (Science and Technology Foundation), through projects UID/Multi/00073/2020 Geosciences Center-Coimbra University. N. Moreira (ICT) is financed by FCT-Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the programmatic project Ref. UIDB/04683/2020. We acknowledge the contributions of the Editor and the two reviewers that greatly improved the text.
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 1 jun 2026