Sarah Pederzani

University of Utah | UOU · Department of Geology and Geophysics

During the Late Pleistocene, stadial and interstadial fluctuations affected vegetation, fauna, and human groups that were forced to cope with these pronounced spatial–temporal climatic and environmental changes. These changes were especially abrupt during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3. Here, we reconstruct the climatic trends in northern Iberia cons...

Recent excavations at Ranis (Germany) identified an early dispersal of Homo sapiens into the higher latitudes of Europe by 45,000 years ago. Here we integrate results from zooarchaeology, palaeoproteomics, sediment DNA and stable isotopes to characterize the ecology, subsistence and diet of these early H. sapiens. We assessed all bone remains (n =...

The spread of Homo sapiens into new habitats across Eurasia ~45,000 years ago and the concurrent disappearance of Neanderthals represents a critical evolutionary turnover in our species’ history. ‘Transitional’ technocomplexes, such as the Lincombian–Ranisian–Jerzmanowician (LRJ), characterize the European record during this period but their makers...

The Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition in Europe is associated with the regional disappearance of Neanderthals and the spread of Homo sapiens. Late Neanderthals persisted in western Europe several millennia after the occurrence of H. sapiens in eastern Europe¹. Local hybridization between the two groups occurred², but not on all occasions³. Ar...

During the Late Pleistocene, stadial and interstadial fluctuations affected vegetation, fauna, and human groups that were forced to cope with these pronounced climatic and environmental changes in time and space. These changes were especially abrupt during the Marine Isotopic Stage (MIS) 3. However, little is still known about the local and regiona...

During the last glacial period, rapidly changing environments posed substantial challenges to Neanderthal populations in Europe. Southern continental regions, such as Iberia, have been proposed as important climatic “buffer” zones during glacial phases. Contextualising the climatic and ecological conditions Neanderthals faced is relevant to interpr...

Northern Armenia and southern Georgia, divided in the Haghtanak-Bagratashen area by the Debed River, witnessed considerable volcanic activity between ~2.1 and 1.6 Ma, towards the end of which the earliest evidence of Homo outside Africa is found at Dmanisi, Georgia (~1.77 ma). The rich assemblages of lithic, faunal, and human fossil materials found...

The exploitation of mid-and large-sized herbivores (ungulates) was central to hominin subsistence across Late Pleistocene Europe. Reconstructing the paleoecology of prey-taxa is key to better understanding procurement strategies, decisions and behaviors, and the isotope analysis of faunal bones and teeth found at archaeological sites represent a po...

Diet is a crucial trait of an animal’s lifestyle and ecology. The trophic level of an organism indicates its functional position within an ecosystem and holds significance for its ecology and evolution. Here, we demonstrate the use of zinc isotopes (δ66Zn) to geochemically assess the trophic level in diverse extant and extinct sharks, including the...

The behavioral dynamics underlying the expansion of Homo sapiens into Europe remains a crucial topic in human evolution. Owing to poor bone preservation, past studies have strongly focused on the Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) stone tool record. Recent excavations and extensive radiocarbon dating at Bacho Kiro Cave (Bulgaria) pushed back the arriv...

The expansion of Homo sapiens across Eurasia marked a major milestone in human evolution that would eventually lead to our species being found across every continent. Current models propose that these expansions occurred only during episodes of warm climate, based on age correlations between archaeological and climatic records. Here, we obtain dire...

Exploring the role of changing climates in human evolution is currently impeded by a scarcity of climatic information at the same temporal scale as the human behaviors documented in archaeological sites. This is mainly caused by high uncertainties in the chronometric dates used to correlate long-term climatic records with archaeological deposits. O...

Preventing the inclusion of oxygen bearing compounds from the organic fraction of skeletal tissues is often considered key to obtaining faithful δ¹⁸O measurements of the mineral fraction, which are widely used across the archaeological, forensic and geochemical sciences. Here we re-explore the contentious issue of organic removal pretreatments by e...

Here we present phosphate oxygen isotope (d 18 O PO4) data from horse (Equus sp.) tooth enamel (bio-apatite) from the early Eemian and early Weichselian find levels at the archaeological site of Neumark-Nord 2, Germany. Based on the relationship between d 18 O PO4 of bioapatite, body water, local precipitation and air temperature, these data are us...

Oxygen isotope analyses of skeletal remains (¹⁸O/¹⁶O, δ¹⁸O) are a powerful tool for exploring major themes in bioarchaeology (the study of biological archaeological remains) and can aid in the reconstruction of past human-environment interactions, socio-cultural decisions and individual life histories. Making use of the preserved animal and human t...

The relationship between leaf water, meteoric water, and the amplitude of seasonal oxygen isotopic change associated with dietary and environmental inputs recorded in the time-sensitive record enamel bioapatite have yet to be fully explored. Here, we measure oxygen and carbon isotopes of tooth enamel carbonates obtained from the sequentially sample...