Paul Palmqvist

• PhD
• Full Professor of Paleontology at University of Malaga

Intermittent flight through flap-gliding (alternating flapping phases and gliding phases with spread wings) or bounding (flapping and ballistic phases with wings folded against the body) are strategies to optimize aerial efficiency which are commonly used among small birds today. The broad morphological disparity of Mesozoic birds suggests that a r...

RESUMEN La paleontología española jugó un papel destacado en el libro "La Evolución", cuya primera edición se publicó en 1966, pues no solo su codirección recayó en tres paleontólogos, Miquel Crusafont, Bermudo Meléndez y Emiliano Aguirre, sino que más de un tercio de los artículos que componen la obra los redactaron autores procedentes de esta dis...

Specialized organisms are useful for exploring the combined effects of selection of functional traits and developmental constraints on patterns of phenotypic integration. Sabretooth predators are one of the most interesting examples of specialization among mammals. Their hypertrophied, sabre-shaped upper canines and their powerfully built forelimbs...

With an age of ~1.6e1.5 Ma, the Early Pleistocene site of Venta Micena (Orce, Baza Basin, SE Spain) has provided the large mammals assemblage of Late Villafranchian age with higher preservational completeness in Western Europe and offers a unique opportunity to analyze the food webs of the mammalian paleocommunity before the first human arrival in...

Our knowledge of the diversity, ecology, and phylogeny of Mesozoic birds has increased significantly during recent decades, yet our understanding of their flight competence remains poor. Wing loading ( WL ) and aspect ratio ( AR ) are two aerodynamically relevant parameters, as they relate to energy costs of aerial locomotion and flight maneuverabi...

Miquel De Renzi de la Fuente es un paleontólogo catalán que ha realizado gran parte de su investigación y magisterio en la Universitat de València, como catedrático de Paleontología. Es difícil indicar cuál de sus dos grandes facetas ha sido más importante, su investigación o su docencia. Son muchos los alumnos de Biología que quedaron marcados por...

On 2015, after the direct study of the most important Late Villafranchian fossil collections of Europe and Western Asia, including Orce (Spain), Pirro Nord and Upper Valdarno (Italy), Appollonia (Greece), Dmanisi (Georgia) and ‘Ubeidiya (Israel), among others, our team proposed the hypothesis that suids disappeared from Europe during the time span...

The late Early Pleistocene archaeological site of Fuente Nueva-3 (FN3), which lies in the Guadix-Baza Depression (SE Spain) and is dated to ~ 1.4 Ma, contributes some of the oldest evidence of hominin presence in Western Europe, including a huge tool assemblage of Oldowan tradition, manuports (i.e., unmodified stones used as percussion tools) and a...

Most European rewilding initiatives are based on the recovery of large herbivores, particularly European bison Bison bonasus, aiming at restoring ecosystem processes and increase trophic complexity. The growing support for the release of bison as a wild species, and change its legal status, in Spain, as an ecological analogue of the extinct steppe...

Most European rewilding initiatives are based on the recovery of large herbivores, particularly European bison Bison bonasus, aiming at restoring ecosystem processes and increase trophic complexity. The growing support for the release of bison as a wild species, and change its legal status, in Spain, as an ecological analogue of the extinct steppe...

The Nahuel Huapi Region (North Patagonia, Argentina) preserves a rich paleontological and archaeological record of the last ca. 20,000 cal BP. This interval corresponds to the climatic fluctuations of the last part of the Late Pleistocene-Holocene period and a number of biotic events, including the megamammals extinction as well as the first arriva...

The Lower Pliocene to upper Middle Pleistocene continental sedimentary infillings of the Baza Basin (Guadix-Baza Depression, SE Spain) are worldwide unique by their high stratigraphic completeness and exceptional preservation of their fossil record of terrestrial vertebrates. These sediments were deposited in fluvio-lacustrine environments and pres...

The Early Pleistocene sites of Orce in southeastern Spain, including Fuente Nueva-3 (FN3), Barranco León (BL) and Venta Micena (VM), provide important insights into the earliest hominin populations and Late Villafranchian large mammal communities. Dated to approximately 1.4 million years ago, FN3 and BL preserve abundant Oldowan tools, cut marks an...

The late Early Pleistocene archaeological site of Fuente Nueva-3 (FN3), which lies in the Guadix-Baza Depression (SE Spain) and is dated to ~ 1.4 Ma, contributes some of the oldest evidence of hominin presence in Western Europe, including a huge tool assemblage of Oldowan tradition, manuports (i.e., unmodified stones used as percussion tools) and a...

The Early Pliocene to late Middle Pleistocene continental sedimentary infillings of the Baza Basin (Guadix-Baza Depression, SE Spain) are worldwide unique by their high stratigraphic completeness and exceptional preservation of their fossil record of terrestrial vertebrates. These sediments were deposited in fluvio-lacustrine environments and prese...

The late Early Pleistocene archaeological site of Fuente Nueva-3 (FN3), which lies in the Guadix-Baza Depression (SE Spain) and is dated to ~ 1.4 Ma, contributes some of the oldest evidence of hominin presence in Western Europe, including a huge tool assemblage of Oldowan tradition, manuports (i.e., unmodified stones used as percussion tools) and a...

An in-depth study of the Early Pleistocene European remains of Hippopotamus has allowed the first detailed description of the incidence and types of dental alterations related to palaeopathologies and potentially linked to climatic and environmental factors. The results of a long-term qualitative and quantitative assessment highlight the importance...

The Early Pleistocene archeological site of Fuente Nueva-3 (FN3) preserves some of the oldest evidence of hominin presence in Western Europe, including a huge assemblage of Oldowan tools and evidence of butchering and marrow processing of large mammal bones. Moreover, there is also evidence of the regular presence of carnivores at the site, includi...

In 2017, a hemimandible (MW5-B208), corresponding to the Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis), was found in a stratigraphically-controlled and radio-isotopically-dated sequence of the Melka Wakena paleoanthropological site-complex, on the Southeastern Ethiopian Highlands ,~2300 m above sea level. The specimen is the first and unique Pleistocene fossil o...

The late Early Pleistocene archaeological site of Fuente Nueva 3 (Orce, Guadix-Baza Depression, SE Spain), dated to ~1.4 Ma, provides evidence on the subsistence strategies of the first hominin population that dispersed in Western Europe. The site preserves Oldowan tool assemblages associated with abundant remains of large mammals. A small proporti...

The cheetah Acinonyx jubatus, the fastest living land mammal, is an atypical member of the family Felidae. The extinct feline Miracinonyx trumani, known as the North American cheetah, is thought to have convergently evolved with Acinonyx to pursue fast and open-country prey across prairies and steppe environments of the North American Pleistocene....

Harpagornis, el águila extinta de Haast (Hieraaetus moorei), fue la mayor ave de presa que haya surcado los cielos. Su masa corporal promedio se ha calculado en 12,3 kg para los machos y 17,8 kg para las hembras. Es decir, pesaba 3,5 veces más que un águila real (Aquila chrysaetos).

This article studies the evolutionary change of allometries in the relative size of the two main cranial modules (neurocranium and splanchnocranium) in the five living hominid species and a diverse sample of extinct hominins. We use six standard craniometric variables as proxies for the length, width and height of each cranial module. Factor analys...

Esta obra es un a excelente síntesis de los avances teróricos y metodológicos realizados durante la última década en el campo de la moderna morfometría geométrica, dejando en gran medida obsoletos a los dos libors previamente publivados porel autor (Bookstein, 1978; Mokstein et al., 1985), por lo que su consula resulta indispensable para aquellos p...

Este libro viene a llenar, en gran medida, el vaci3o actualmente existente en tratados sobre Tafonomía, particularmente en lo que respecta a sus contemos relativos a la bioestratinomia particularmente en el en lo domino marino (la Tafonomia de los vertebrados terrestres ha recibido, com­paratívamente, una mayor atención; vease Behrensmeyer y Hill,...

El Prof. Richard A. Reyment, del Departamento de Geología Histórica y Paleontología de la Universidad de Uppsala (Suecia), puede ser considerado con justicia como posiblemente uno de los mayores expertos del mundo en técnicas estadísticas y de morfometría multivariante aplicadas a la resolución de los problemas que se plantean en el ámbito de las C...

Los comentarios y críticas efectuadas par el Dr. Carlos Martin Escorza en relación con el trabajo en que aplicamos, de forma pionera en Paleontología Humana, los métodos del análisis fractal al estudio comparativo de las suturas preservadas en el fragmento craneal de Homo sp. de Venta Micena (Orce, Granada) se pueden clasificar, según nuestro crite...

Con objeto de evaluar las relaciones entre la capacidad de percibir similitudes morfológicas y una serie de factores tales como el rendimiento académico, sexo, nivel de estudios y entorno urbano de la localidad de residencia familiar, se ha sometido a un conjunto de estudiantes de Ciencias Biológicas de la Universidad de Malaga a una prueba consist...

The chronology and environmental context of the first hominin dispersal in Europe have been subject to debate and controversy. The oldest settlements in Eurasia (e.g., Dmanisi, ∼1.8 Ma) suggest a scenario in which the Caucasus and southern Asia were occupied ∼0.4 Ma before the first peopling of Europe. Barranco León (BL) and Fuente Nueva 3 (FN3), t...

Estimates of adult body mass are usually considered as equivalent of mean population body size in most studies of ancient mammals. However, given that any population is composed in part of subadult individuals, this approach overestimates the mean population body mass and biomass. For this reason, more realistic estimates of mean population body ma...

The archaeopaleontological site of Dmanisi in Georgia, dated to ∼1.8 Ma, provides evidence on the first hominin dispersal out of Africa, while the sites of Barranco León and Fuente Nueva-3 in Spain, dated to ∼1.4 Ma, record the earliest hominin settlements in Europe. However, a number of issues related to the dispersal route, the climatic condition...

Venta Micena, an Early Pleistocene site of the Baza Basin (SE Spain), preserves a rich and diverse assemblage of large mammals. VM3, the main excavation quarry of the site, has been interpreted as a den of the giant hyaena Pachycrocuta brevirostris in the plain that surrounded the Baza palaeolake. Taphonomic analysis of VM3 has shown that the hyaen...

Venta Micena, an Early Pleistocene site of the Baza Basin (SE Spain), preserves a rich and diverse assemblage of large mammals. VM3, the main excavation quarry of the site, has been interpreted as a den of the giant hyaena Pachycrocuta brevirostris in the plain that surrounded the Baza palaeolake. Taphonomic analysis of VM3 has shown that the hyaen...

Venta Micena, an Early Pleistocene site of the Baza Basin (SE Spain), preserves a rich and diverse assemblage of large mammals. VM3, the main excavation quarry of the site, has been interpreted as a den of the giant hyaena Pachycrocuta brevirostris in the plain that surrounded the Baza palaeolake. Taphonomic analysis of VM3 has shown that the hyaen...

The renowned site of Dmanisi in Georgia, southern Caucasus (ca. 1.8 Ma) yielded the earliest direct evidence of hominin presence out of Africa. In this paper, we report on the first record of a large-sized canid from this site, namely dentognathic remains, referable to a young adult individual that displays hypercarnivorous features (e.g., the redu...

The site of Venta Micena (Orce, Spain), c. 1.6 Ma, preserves one the best paleontological records of the early Pleistocene large mammals fauna in Europe. Here we describe the specimens of the genus Canis Linnaeus, 1758 in the context of the late Villafranchian and Epivillafranchian fossil dogs from Eurasia. Anatomical and metric data suggest that t...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

The renowned site of Dmanisi in Georgia, southern Caucasus (ca. 1.8 Ma) yielded the earliest direct evidence of hominin presence out of Africa. In this paper, we report the first record of a large-sized canid from this site, namely dentognathic remains, referable to a young adult individual that displays hypercarnivorous features (e.g., the reducti...

two archaeo-palaeontological lower Pleistocene sites of orce (Baza Basin, Se Spain), Fuente nueva 3 (1.3 Ma) and Barranco león (1.4 Ma), preserve some of the earliest evidence of human presence in the euro-pean continent. During the 2013 field season, a small Lyncodontini mustelid mandible was found at Fuente Nueva-3. This finding was accompanied b...

Cleaning works in the cave of Las Palomas in Teba (Málaga, Spain), developed by the Guadalteba Consortium, have provided a number of lithic tools and knapping products that may be ascribed to the Mode III technotypological tradition as well as remains of a number of large mammal species typical of MiddleeLate Pleistocene times. Topographic measurem...

Patterns of phenotypic integration and modularity provide important clues to understand phenotypic evolution. Here, we investigate patterns of integration and modularity of the pelvic girdle in mammalian carnivorans. Three-dimensional geometric morphometrics was used to test for different modular hypotheses by combining in different ways the four o...

The lower Miocene Santa Cruz Formation (dated to ~18–16 Ma) of Southern Patagonia, Argentina, preserves rich vertebrate faunas, which are representative of communities that existed prior to the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI). Some previous researchers have hypothesized that these pre-GABI faunas had a low richness of mammalian carnivores...

We report on the taxonomy and paleodiet of the bear population that inhabited the emblematic palaeoanthropological Early Pleistocene (1.8 Ma) site of Dmanisi (Georgia), based on a dual approach combining morphometrics and microwear of upper and lower teeth. Given that the teeth of Ursus etruscus Cuvier, 1823 from Dmanisi show considerable size vari...

Ancient evidence of human presence in Europe is recorded in several Early Pleistocene archaeopalaeontological sites from Spain, France and Italy. This is the case of Barranco León (BL) and Fuente Nueva-3 (FN-3), two localities placed near the town of Orce (depression of Baza and Guadix, SE Spain) and dated to ~1.4 Ma. At these sites, huge assemblag...

Significance The six “evolutionary faunas” of large mammal taxonomic diversity described for the North American Cenozoic have a nonrandom ecomorphological spectrum and show a long-term trend toward greater ecological specialization over the past 66 My. We show here that each successive fauna was characterized by a change toward more specialized eco...

Survival and mortality profiles of mammalian species can provide information on the environmental context of Pleistocene archaeopaleontological localities as well as on the agents involved in the site formation process (e.g., the role played by the bone-accumulating agents, including their patterns of food procurement and carcass consumption, or th...

The site of Huéscar-1 (Baza basin, Granada, Spain) yielded an interesting paleontological record close in age to the Early-Middle Pleistocene boundary. In 2003 two lithic artifacts were found, confirming the human presence at this site. The faunal assemblage preserves few marsh turtle remains, a number of avian species, and small and large mammals,...

Atmospheric conditions are critical for a range of biological functions—locomotion among others—and long-term changes in these conditions have been identified as causal for different macroevolutionary patterns. Here we examine the influence of variations in atmospheric O2 concentration (AOC), temperature (Tair), and air density (ρair) on the power...

El reglamento de actividades arqueológicas de Andalucía, en su versión actual, lesiona gravemente las competencias profesionales de los paleontólogos y, por extensión, de toda una serie de especialistas del ámbito de la Biología y la Geología, como los estratígrafos, los geocronólogos, los geomorfólogos, los paleobiólogos, los palinólogos, los sedi...

Se lleva a cabo una revisión de los conceptos, procedimientos y normativa legal vigente utilizados en la definición, catalogación, conservación y puesta en valor del patrimonio geológico y paleontológico. Así mismo, se analizan de modo específico los condicionantes geográficos y geológicos ligados a los lugares de interés paleontológico definidos h...

RESUMEN España es el país con mayor número de yacimientos bien conservados, cantidad y calidad de fósiles de todo el continente europeo. Aquí se describe el patrimonio paleobiológico correspondiente al Plio-Pleistoceno (últimos 5,3 millones de años) registrado en los principales yacimientos con presencia de fósiles de grandes mamíferos de la Peníns...

El yacimiento de Baza-1 se localiza en la cuenca de Baza (Granada), pudiéndose considerar la mejor localidad de edad Rusciniense de la Península Ibérica. En este yacimiento se han realizado excavaciones sistemáticas durante los años 2001, 2002, 2015, 2016, 2017 y 2018 en una zona de unos 25 m2 aproximadamente, de la que se han extraído más de 1000...

While environmental factors affect animal locomotion (especially among fliers), few studies have addressed the relationship between aerial function in extinct vertebrates and paleoatmospheric conditions, and none have focused on avian flight. Our study explores the impact of varying O2 concentrations, global temperatures, and air densities on the f...

Comment les vestiges matériels du passé se sont-ils constitués et conservés au cours du temps, durant des centaines, des milliers, ou des millions d’années? C’est dans cette perspective que se placent les études en taphonomie, largement pluri- et inter-disciplinaires, intégrant de multiples approches scientifiques relevant des sciences de la Terre,...

La primera dispersión humana en Europa occidental: ¿una colonización demorada? La cronología de la dispersión humana inicial hacia Eurasia desde el continente africano y las edades de los primeros asentamientos europeos se han visto sometidas a intenso debate durante las últimas décadas. Así, la fecha más antigua confirmada de presencia humana fuer...

The chronology of the first human dispersal out of Africa and the ecological role of the genus Homo in Europe as a scavenger or an active hunter during the late Early Pleistocene are two of the paleoanthropological topics most hotly debated during the last decades. The earliest human occurrences in Western Europe are recorded in the Iberian Peninsu...

The Guadix–Baza depression (southeastern Spain) preserves one of the best continental Plio-Pleistocene records of the European continent. The new site, Baza-1, is the first Ruscinian locality with fauna of large vertebrates known in the basin. During the summer seasons of 2001, 2002, 2015 and 2016, systematic excavations were undertaken in the site...

Dental morphology and tooth microwear studies are used as analytical proxies for understanding the taxonomy, biochronology, paleobiology and ecogeographical context of Early Pleistocene Ursus species (U. etruscus) and other large carnivore taxa (Hyaenidae and Canidae) preserved in the Early Pleistocene (Calabrian) sites from Orce (Guadix-Baza basin...

Here, we perform an ecomorphological study on the major bones (humerus, radius, and ulna) of the carnivoran forelimb using three-dimensional geometric morphometrics. More specifically, we test the association between forelimb morphology and predatory behavior. Our results suggest that the main morphological adaptions of carnivorans to different pre...

The paleontological sites of Barranco León-D and Fuente Nueva-3 (Baza Basin, SE Spain) provide the oldest evidence (~1.4 Ma) on human presence in Western Europe during Early Pleistocene times. In this paper we analyze the demographic inferences derived from: (1) the estimates of population density obtained for the species of secondary consumers pre...

With an age of ~1.4 Ma, the Early Pleistocene sites of Barranco León-D and Fuente Nueva-3 (Baza Basin, SE Spain) provide the oldest evidence on human presence in Western Europe. Here we use a mathematical approach based on Leslie matrices to quantify, for the large mammal species preserved at these sites, the biomass of primary consumers available,...

Fuente Nueva 1 is a paleontological site known since the 1980's, but few excavations have taken place in this locality during the time elapsed from its discovery. The last excavation season, in the summer of 2015, has unearthed more than 250 bone remains of large mammals. It should be notedthe appearance of more than 30 horn cores, mostly complete,...

The functional explanation of the marginal corrugation of ammonoid septa is a challenge given the lack of extant representatives and hence the impossibility of direct experimentation on them. For this reason, the lines of evidence must be based on comparisons of ammonites with other extant cephalopods. Here, we study the ontogenetic allometries of...

Suids are found in Europe before and during the Olduvai magnetostratigraphic subchron, including the Fonelas P-1 site in the Guadix Basin (Andalusia, Southern Spain, ~2.0 Ma), in which the remains have been ascribed to Potamochoerus magnus, and many other localities that record the presence of Sus strozzii (e.g., Saint Vallier and Senèze in France)...

Los hipopótamos se encuentran representados hoy día por dos especies afri-canas, Hippopotamus amphibius, el hipopótamo común, de vida semiacuática, y Choeropsis liberiensis, el hipopótamo pigmeo, de hábitos más terrestres (Boisserie, 2005). Los hipopótamos comunes se desenvuelven en zonas de aguas tranquilas y someras, que abandonan durante la noch...

The relative importance of the two main cranial complexes, the neurocranium and the splanchnocranium, has been examined in the five species of extant hominoids and in a huge sample of extinct hominins using six standard craniometric variables that measure the length, width and height of each cranial module. Factor analysis and two-block partial lea...