First hominin fossils recovered from submerged Sundaland

The Sunda shelf houses a rich record of fossils of the Pleistocene Hominin, including specimens of Homo Floresiensis, Homo Luzonensis, Homo Erectus and Homo Archaic. A large part of the Sunday shelf is overwhelmed. Sometimes, during the Pleistocene, however, the plateau was exposed, forming the large terrestrial mass known under the name of Sunday.

Knowledge of the rich and complex evolutionary and migratory history of the hominins which once lived there is hampered by large expanses of the earthquake of Sunday submerged today.

Dr. Harold Berghuis and his colleagues recently had the opportunity to examine the fossils that had been dredged as part of a construction project. Among the fossils, they found the first leftovers of overwhelmed housewife, and one of them belonged to H. erectus. Their study is published in the journal Quaternary and human environments.

In 2014 and 2015, the company Portuary Berlian Manyar Sejahtera (BMS) ordered the development of an artificial island for the manipulation of goods.

In the process, they have flooded more than 5 million m³ of sand to build an island of 100 hectares. During the later inspection of the artificial island, vertebrate fossils were noted – in total, 6,732 specimens were recovered.

Over the past decade, the extraction site has been the subject of various geological studies. Meanwhile, a certain number of deep boreholes have been manufactured, which allows to rebuild the geological framework of the underwater sand extraction site.

In addition to these two, the OLS dates were taken from the river sandstone, giving ages of 162 ± 31 and 119 ± 27 ka. This places the extraction site in stadium 6 of the marine isotope 6.

Dr. Berghuis explains how they were able to determine that the fossils came from the specific filling of the valley put rather than being reworked older deposits.

“The river reshuffle of fossils from older deposits is always something that must be taken into account. But in this particular context, there are several indications that this has not been the case.

“One: we examine the large -scale valley systems in a plain setting. The cut and the filling of these valleys were mainly controlled by the framework of the large amplitude of the Pleistocene in the middle of the sea. And the fluctuations of the sea level.

“Two: the submerged valley reaches a depth of 50 m below sea level, when we only dredged at 32 m under sea level. This implies that we have remained well above the basal conglomerates of the valley.

“Three: the uniform state of mineralization and the absence of rounding do not point to a heterogeneous environment or in -depth transport. However, I admit that this last point is certainly not decisive. I would say that one and two are the most convincing.”

It seems that during the MIS, the region housed various species, including Stegodon Trigonocephalus, Duboisia Santeng, Epileptobos Groeneveldtii and Axis Lydekkeri, indicating a dry and open landscape.

Among the fossil discoveries, there were also two hominine fossils, the Strait of Madura 1 and 2 (Ms 1 and 2).

To determine the species from which they came, the Dr. Berghuis team compared the fossils to various other specimens, including the species of H. erectus of China and Java of different periods, H. Floresiensis and Homo Archaic.

They found that MS1 was morphologically the most similar at the end of the Javanese Pleistocene Homo Erectus (140–92 KA).

Although MS2 cannot be identified with species, it was most similar to archaic homo.

The two fossils are the first Hominin fossils in Switzerland submerged and demonstrate that the populations of Homo erectus extend beyond Java on the plains of plain exposed during the average pleistocene.

It is likely that other hominines have migrated south in a similar way; However, limited fossil evidence complicates understanding of the evolution and migration of these species. It is likely that more fossils are on the submerged seabed from Sunday.

However, taking fossil of seabed is expensive and can generally only be done for construction work, explains Dr. Berghuis. “The extraction of seabed sand is very expensive. You will only do it for construction work. So the only thing we can do is stay in touch with local port authorities and developers.

“It can of course be a new sand extraction work planned here, or in a nearby site. It is essential that paleontologists are involved, in this case.”

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