Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Dirks, Paul Hgm
• Roberts, Eric M
• Hilbert-Wolf, Hannah
• Kramers, Jan D
• Hawks, John
• Dosseto, Anthony
• Duval, Mathieu
• Elliott, Marina
• Evans, Mary
• Grün, Rainer
• Hellstrom, John
• Herries, Andy Ir
• Joannes-Boyau, Renaud
• Makhubela, Tebogo V
• Placzek, Christa J
• Robbins, Jessie
• Spandler, Carl
• Wiersma, Jelle
• Woodhead, Jon
• Berger, Lee R

Titel

The age of Homo naledi and associated sediments in the Rising Star Cave, South Africa

Ist Teil von

• eLife, 2017-05, Vol.6

Ort / Verlag

England: eLife Sciences Publications Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Free E-Journal (出版社公開部分のみ）

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• New ages for flowstone, sediments and fossil bones from the Dinaledi Chamber are presented. We combined optically stimulated luminescence dating of sediments with U-Th and palaeomagnetic analyses of flowstones to establish that all sediments containing fossils can be allocated to a single stratigraphic entity (sub-unit 3b), interpreted to be deposited between 236 ka and 414 ka. This result has been confirmed independently by dating three teeth with combined U-series and electron spin resonance (US-ESR) dating. Two dating scenarios for the fossils were tested by varying the assumed levels of Rn loss in the encasing sediments: a maximum age scenario provides an average age for the two least altered fossil teeth of 253 +82/-70 ka, whilst a minimum age scenario yields an average age of 200 +70/-61 ka. We consider the maximum age scenario to more closely reflect conditions in the cave, and therefore, the true age of the fossils. By combining the US-ESR maximum age estimate obtained from the teeth, with the U-Th age for the oldest flowstone overlying fossils, we have constrained the depositional age of to a period between 236 ka and 335 ka. These age results demonstrate that a morphologically primitive hominin, survived into the later parts of the Pleistocene in Africa, and indicate a much younger age for the fossils than have previously been hypothesized based on their morphology.