Raquel Hernando, a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral researcher at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), and associated with the ERC AdG Tied2Teeth project, is a member of an international team led by Prof. Julio Mercader, of the University of Calgary (Canada), which has published a paper in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment on the species Homo erectus, which challenges our preconceptions of the adaptability of the earliest hominins.

This paper reports the results of new work carried out recently at the Engaji Nanyori site in Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania), five decades after the discovery of H. erectus there, which reveals that this species prospered in the hyperarid environments of East Africa around one million years ago, demonstrating much greater ecological flexibility than was believed.

"The data obtained at Engaji Nanyori are key to understanding how H. erectus managed resources in arid environments, displaying an adaptive flexibility that was the hallmark of the success of their dispersion", says Hernando, who coordinated the excavation work at this Tanzanian site, which yielded the faunal and industry assemblages essential to reconstructing the subsistence and ecological dynamics of these hominins.

The research performed used an interdisciplinary approach which included techniques such as biogeochemical and molecular analyses, paleobotanical studies and archaeological analyses, which portray an ecosystem dominated by semidesert scrub, in which H. erectus repeatedly occupied fluvial landscapes to gain access to water and other crucial resources, and adapting to extreme conditions long before the advent of our own species, H. sapiens.

An international undertaking
This project led by Mercader at Olduvai brings to bear a variety of disciplines, including archaeology, paleoanthropology, museology, social and environmental sciences, geosciences, biology and conservation. Thanks to this multi-pronged attack, an integrated evaluation of the ancient environments and ecosystems was performed, which also looked at the diet and subsistence strategies of H. erectus, giving us a unified view of its capacity for adaptation to extreme environments.

Crucial to this investigation was international collaboration among researchers from 22 institutions in different countries, together with the invaluable participation of the Masai community at Olduvai Gorge, and it was made possible by funding from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) through its Partnership Grant scheme.