Les Néandertaliens étaient-ils essentiellement carnivores ? Résultats préliminaires sur les teneurs en Sr et en Ba de la paléobiocénose mammalienne de Saint-Césaire
Abstract
Strontium-calcium (Sr/Ca) and barium-calcium (Ba/Ca) ratios are reduced constantly between diet and bioapatite in mammal organisms. This phenomenon leads to a reduction in the Sr/Ca and Ba/Ca ratios at higher trophic level in predator-prey mammalian communities, and is applied here to the reconstruction of a castelperronian food web, which includes a Neanderthal specimen. Adapted chemical pretreatment allows to isolate bioapatite from diagenetic compounds for analysis of Ca, Sr and Ba. Sr/Ca and Ba/Ca results of the fauna are consistent with trophic predictions. Initial results for the Neandertal suggest that he was mostly carnivorous. Distribution of Ba/Ca values of bones of herbivorous taxa reveals that ruminant animals can be distinguished from non-ruminants. The biosegregation model predicts that the diet of the Neandertal was composed by about 97 % in weight of meat with a weak contribution of vegetable or fish, and that the association of fish and plant is excluded in any proportion.
- Publication:
-
Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences - Series IIA - Earth and Planetary Science
- Pub Date:
- January 2001
- DOI:
- 10.1016/S1251-8050(00)01490-7
- Bibcode:
- 2001CRASE.332...59B