Podcast Homo Erectus Beneath the Waves

The Sunda Shelf has been widely exposed during most of the Pleistocene. The area must have played an important role in the dispersal and evolution of species including hominins, however, thus far, fossils were only known from the islands.

Over the past years, an international team has worked on the first vertebrate site on the submerged shelf. The fossils derive from the fill of a submerged valley, which was dated to ~140 ka. The assemblage covers 36 vertebrate species, including Homo erectus. Their presence is also inferred from cut marks and battered ruminant bones.

The assemblage provides a unique window to the late Middle Pleistocene vertebrate community of the former lowland plains and the role of hominins therein. Today, the results of the study are published in ‘Quaternary Environments and Humans’, which is celebrated with this lecture.