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A Fossil History of Southern African Land Mammals

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A Fossil History of Southern African Land Mammals Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 29 Sep 2021 at 12:08:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/41969EC1E7739F4775954E6ADA8EA036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 29 Sep 2021 at 12:08:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/41969EC1E7739F4775954E6ADA8EA036 A Fossil History of Southern African Land Mammals There is an ever-growing wealth of mammalian fossil material being collected from palaeontological and archaeological sites in southern Africa. This reference provides comprehensive information on the taxonomy and distribution in time and space of all currently recognised southern African fossil mammals. After an introductory background chapter on southern Africa, mammals, sites and dating, the following chapters are presented by epoch, covering the Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene and Holocene. Individual maps provide information on where in the landscape specific taxa have been found, and a comprehensive index lists all the fauna and site locations. It ends with a chapter on how the book can be used, and lines of future research. Collecting a vast amount of information together in an accessible format, this is an essential reference for non-specialist taxonomists and palaeontologists, as well as for those using fossil data for other applications, such as archaeology, neontology and nature conservation. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. D. Margaret Avery is Emeritus Associate of Cenozoic Studies at Iziko Museums of South Africa, and Honorary Researcher at the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of Witwatersrand. Her research interests include understanding the background of human evolution, as well as modern micromammals. She was the President of the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA) between 2011 and 2015, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 29 Sep 2021 at 12:08:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/41969EC1E7739F4775954E6ADA8EA036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 29 Sep 2021 at 12:08:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/41969EC1E7739F4775954E6ADA8EA036 A Fossil History of Southern African Land Mammals D. MARGARET AVERY Iziko Museums of South Africa Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 29 Sep 2021 at 12:08:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/41969EC1E7739F4775954E6ADA8EA036 University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108480888 DOI: 10.1017/9781108647243 © D. Margaret Avery 2019 This work is in copyright. It is subject to statutory exceptions and to the provisions of relevant licensing agreements; with the exception of the Creative Commons version the link for which is provided below, no reproduction of any part of this work may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. An online version of this work is published at doi.org/10.1017/9781108647243 under a Creative Commons Open Access licence CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 which permits re-use, distribution and reproduction in any medium for non-commercial purposes providing appropriate credit to the original work is given. You may not distribute derivative works without permission. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 All versions of this work may contain content reproduced under license from third parties. Permission to reproduce this third-party content must be obtained from these third-parties directly. When citing this work, please include a reference to the DOI 10.1017/9781108647243 First published 2019 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Avery, D. Margaret, author. Title: A fossil history of southern African land mammals / D. Margaret Avery, Iziko Museums of South Africa. Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018045348 | ISBN 9781108480888 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Mammals, Fossil–Africa, Southern. Classification: LCC QE881 .A94 2019 | DDC 569.0968–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045348 ISBN 978-1-108-48088-8 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 29 Sep 2021 at 12:08:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/41969EC1E7739F4775954E6ADA8EA036 To all those whose hard work made this book necessary, and in memory of my friend, H. Basil S. Cooke Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 29 Sep 2021 at 12:08:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/41969EC1E7739F4775954E6ADA8EA036 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 29 Sep 2021 at 12:08:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/41969EC1E7739F4775954E6ADA8EA036 Contents Acknowledgements page viii 1. Background 1 1.1 History and Rationale 1 1.2 Southern Africa 2 1.3 Mammals 2 1.4 Sites 4 1.5 Mapping 4 1.6 Dating 4 2. The Eocene 6 2.1 Eocene Mammals 6 2.2 Eocene Sites 11 3. The Miocene 12 3.1 Miocene Mammals 12 3.2 Miocene Sites 35 4. The Pliocene 39 4.1 Pliocene Mammals 39 4.2 Pliocene Sites 68 5. The Pleistocene 71 5.1 Pleistocene Mammals 71 5.2 Pleistocene Sites 122 6. The Holocene 145 6.1 Holocene Mammals 145 6.2 Holocene Sites 183 7. Present and Future 219 7.1 The Current Situation 219 7.2 The Way Forward 222 References 223 Index 295 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 29 Sep 2021 at 12:08:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/41969EC1E7739F4775954E6ADA8EA036 Acknowledgements Thanks go to the authors and librarians who responded to requests for reprints and information, especially Martin Pickford, Sorbonne Universités, who answered numerous queries. Tribute must also be paid to various indispensable online archives, particularly the Biodiversity Heritage Library (www.biodiversitylibrary.org) and Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr). The University of Edinburgh provided access to JSTOR through its Alumni Access Program. Richard G. Klein, Stanford University, kindly reviewed an early draft and drew my attention to several important references. Andries van Aarde, AOSIS, made excellent suggestions for improving the text. Open Access publication was made possible through grants from the University of the Witwatersrand Centre of Excellence for Palaeosciences and the Palaeontological Scientific Trust (PAST), both in Johannesburg. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 29 Sep 2021 at 12:08:23, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/41969EC1E7739F4775954E6ADA8EA036 CHAPTER 1 Background 1.1 HISTORY AND RATIONALE Mammalian palaeontological and archaeological work in southern African has a history reaching back nearly two centuries, though this initially took the form of what Underhill (2011) calls a ‘Victorian penchant [for] the recognition and collection of artefacts’. Probably the first published report of a fossil from South Africa was made in 1839 (Bain 1839; Seeley 1891), while T. H. Bowker excavated artefacts from near the mouth of the Fish River in 1857, and a Palaeolithic stone implement from Cape Town was sent to England in 1866 (Malan 1970). It was not until early in the twentieth century that palaeontological work began in earnest (e.g. Broom 1909a, 1909b and Péringuey 1911) published seminal works on the Stone Ages of South Africa. What might be described as the modern era began some 20 years later. South African mammalian palaeontology received a major boost with the report of Australopithecus africanus from Taung (Dart 1925), and by the second half of the 1930s Broom (e.g. 1936a, 1936b, 1937a, 1937b) had begun to describe material from the extremely rich limestone caves of the then Transvaal (now Gauteng), which continue to yield new forms (e.g. Berger et al. 2015; Fourvel 2018). The palaeontological importance of Namibia (then South West Africa) only began to be appreciated during the 1920s (e.g. Stromer 1921), but the importance of this country for Eocene and Miocene mammalian evolution has since become abundantly clear through the ongoing work of Martin Pickford and colleagues, especially Brigitte Senut, Jorge Morales and Pierre Mein.
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