![]() ![]() The new paleontological sites on the Cheringoma Plateau are ∼95 km from the coast.Ĭosmogenic nuclide dating presented here indicates that the Gorongosa paleontological localities are of Miocene age. The park hosts a wide range of environments. Map of Gorongosa National Park along the East African Rift Valley, with the Cheringoma Plateau to the east and Mount Gorongosa to the northwest. Locality data from the Paleobiology Database. Gorongosa is the only Miocene paleontological locality in the southern ∼1500 km of the EARS. There are many Miocene localities in the rift near the equator, but the record away from the equator, especially to the south, is very sparse. B) Number of Miocene paleontological localities along the EARS by latitude. ![]() Base map from Nasa Shuttle Radar Topography Mission ( ). The development of the EARS since the Miocene has played a major role in shaping the physical environments and modifying the conditions under which plants and animals have been evolving in eastern Africa. biorxiv 2021.14v1/FIG1 F1 fig1 Figure 1.Ī) The East African Rift System (EARS) with the Eastern Branch, the Western Branch, and some of the major basins and rifts, including the Urema Graben at its southern end. The specimens derive from the Mazamba Formation on the eastern shoulder of the Urema Rift in Gorongosa National Park (GNP) ( Figure 2) ( Habermann et al., 2019). Here we describe the first dentognathic specimens of fossil vertebrates discovered in the East African Rift of central Mozambique. Although the necessity of documenting new fossil sites in previously unknown areas is widely appreciated and advocated ( Almécija et al., 2021 Cote, 2018), discovering entirely new paleontological areas is a rare event ( d’Oliveira Coelho, Anemone, & Carvalho, 2021). Furthermore, none of the well-known Miocene fossil sites in the EARS provides evidence of eastern African coastal forests, a major ecosystem that may have played a key role in hominin origins and the evolution of several mammalian lineages ( Joordens, Feibel, Vonhof, Schulp, & Kroon, 2019 Kingdon, 2003). Thus, the Miocene faunas and ecosystems of this southern region have remained virtually unknown. For example, until recently there were no sites with Miocene mammals in the southern 1,500 km of the EARS ( Figure 1). ![]() However, considerable geographic and temporal gaps in the fossil record obscure a full appreciation of past biodiversity, biogeography, and ecosystem evolution on the continent. Much of our knowledge about African Miocene vertebrates and their environments derives from paleontological sites along the East African Rift System (EARS). ![]()
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