Faculty publications - Department of Anthropology

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/1807/68144

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    Technological Trends in the Acheulean of Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa
    (Springer, 2015) Chazan, Michael
    The assemblage of stone tools from P. Beaumont’s Excavation 1 at Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape Province, South Africa, provides a unique stratified sequence covering a large part of the Earlier Stone Age. A combination of cosmogenic burial age and paleomagnetic age dating provides limited chronometric constraint on this sequence. The Wonderwerk sequence provides evidence for the development of Earlier Stone Age technology in southern Africa that parallels the sequence known from East Africa. This paper presents a technological discussion of biface technology at Wonderwerk Cave as well as an overview of the associated lithic assemblage.
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    Colour and odour drive fruit selection and seed dispersal by mouse lemurs
    (Nature, 2013-08-13) Valenta, K. ; Burke, R. ; Jackson, D.A. ; Melin, A. ; Lehman, S.M.
    Animals and fruiting plants are involved in a complex set of interactions, with animals relying on fruiting trees as food resources, and fruiting trees relying on animals for seed dispersal. This interdependence shapes fruit signals such as colour and odour, to increase fruit detectability, and animal sensory systems, such as colour vision and olfaction to facilitate food identification and selection. Despite the ecological and evolutionary importance of plant-animal interactions for shaping animal sensory adaptations and plant characteristics, the details of the relationship are poorly understood. Here we examine the role of fruit chromaticity, luminance and odour on seed dispersal by mouse lemurs. We show that both fruit colour and odour significantly predict fruit consumption and seed dispersal by Microcebus ravelobensis and M. murinus. Our study is the first to quantify and examine the role of bimodal fruit signals on seed dispersal in light of the sensory abilities of the disperser.