Paper short abstract:

At Sangiran, the endemic bovid Duboisia santeng co-occurs with hominids at the hominid locality of Sangiran. The paleoecology of D. santeng clarifies the ecospace of early hominins at Sangiran. We examined the paleoecology of D. santeng and compared the signal with independent proxy data.

Paper long abstract:

According to the fossil record, early hominins reached the Southeast Asian islands in the late Early Pleistocene. The Sangiran hominid site is among the important localities, because its deposits cover a stratigraphic sequence covering the first arrival of hominins in insular Southeast Asia. The paleoecological evaluation of material from Sangiran remains challenging for two reasons. Firstly, the stratigraphic background of a considerable portion of the early fossil sample is uncertain. Secondly, studies in the last decades let to the development of at least 3 competing age models. The paleoecological evaluation of large mammals from Sangiran in the Koenigswald collection is therefore unexplored.

In Sangiran, the endemic bovid Duboisia santeng is coextensive with the hominin fossil record. D. santeng is therefore a significant marker species for hominid paleoecology in Sangiran. Based on information available in the collection several specimens can be attributed to particular layers in the stratigraphy. We reconstructed the ecomorphological signal provided by the set of D. santeng specimens by reconstructing body mass and paleodiet by mesowear and stable carbon isotopes. We then compared it with paleoenvironmental signals from palynology and the signal derived from the mammal communities. The congruence of the signals taken from all 3 sources shows that the stratigraphic information on D. santeng is robust. Changes in the environment are associated with the MPT and illustrate the paleoecological and paleoenvironmental framework of the early hominin dispersal into insular Southeast Asia.