Article
Nature 418, 152-155 (11 July 2002) | doi:10.1038/nature00880; Received 13 March 2002; Accepted 27 May 2002
Geology and palaeontology of the Upper Miocene Toros-Menalla hominid locality, Chad
Patrick Vignaud1, Philippe Duringer2, Hassane Taïsso Mackaye3, Andossa Likius1,3, Cécile Blondel1, Jean-Renaud Boisserie1, Louis de Bonis1, Véra Eisenmann4, Marie-Esther Etienne1, Denis Geraads5, Franck Guy1,6, Thomas Lehmann1, Fabrice Lihoreau1, Nieves Lopez-Martinez7, Cécile Mourer-Chauviré8, Olga Otero1, Jean-Claude Rage4, Mathieu Schuster2, Laurent Viriot1, Antoine Zazzo9 and Michel Brunet1
- Faculté des Sciences et Centre National de Recherche Scientifique UMR 6046, Université de Poitiers, 40 Avenue du Recteur Pineau, 86022 Poitiers Cedex, France
- Centre de Géochimie de la Surface, CNRS UMR 7517, Université Louis Pasteur, 1 rue Blessig, 67084 Strasbourg, France
- Université de N'Djaména, BP 1117 N'Djaména, Tchad
- Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle et CNRS UMR 8569, rue Cuvier, 75005 Paris, France
- Centre National de Recherche Scientifique UPR 2147, 44 rue de l'Amiral Mouchez, 75014 Paris, France
- Peabody Museum, Harvard University, 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, USA
- Dept. Paleontología, Universidad Complutense, 28040 Madrid, Spain
- Centre des Sciences de la Terre, CNRS UMR 5125, Université Claude Bernard, 27-43 Bd du 11 novembre 1918, 69622 Villeurbanne, France
- Centre National de Recherche Scientifique UMR 162 et Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, 4 place Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, France
Correspondence to: Patrick Vignaud1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to P.V. (e-mail: Email: patrick.vignaud@univ-poitiers.fr).
Abstract
All six known specimens of the early hominid Sahelanthropus tchadensis come from Toros-Menalla site 266 (TM 266), a single locality in the Djurab Desert, northern Chad, central Africa. Here we present a preliminary analysis of the palaeontological and palaeoecological context of these finds. The rich fauna from TM 266 includes a significant aquatic component such as fish, crocodiles and amphibious mammals, alongside animals associated with gallery forest and savannah, such as primates, rodents, elephants, equids and bovids. The fauna suggests a biochronological age between 6 and 7 million years. Taken together with the sedimentological evidence, the fauna suggests that S. tchadensis lived close to a lake, but not far from a sandy desert, perhaps the oldest record of desert conditions in the Neogene of northern central Africa.