Dating the hominin footprints from Matalascañas (Spain): taxonomic and paleoanthropological implications [poster] / 
Eduardo J. Mayoral, Jérémy Duveau, Ana Santos, Antonio Rodríguez-Ramírez, Juan Antonio Morales, Ricardo Diaz-Delgado, Jorge Rivera-Silva, Asier Gómez-Olivencia, Ignacio Díaz Martínez. 
 -- [Aarhus, Denmark] :   ESHE Meeting,   2022. 
 - 1 póster 
<br/><br/> The dating of sites occupied by hominins is a key element in order to understand their evolution. It provides information on the spatio-temporal distribution of taxa, which is essential to infer their appearance, migration and disappearance. The knowledge of the chronological context is particularly important when studying hominin footprints since their taxonomic attribution is done in the vast majority of cases only from their dating, the association of archaeological artifacts or skeletal remains with footprints being particularly rare. In 2020, 87 footprints were discovered in a single sandy surface near Matalascañas (Spain). These footprints were then attributed to Neandertals based on initial chrono-stratigraphic studies conducted in 2005 by Zazo and colleagues that provided an age of approximately 106,000 years for the surface where the footprints were found. Here we report new datations of this footprint surface and their implications for the taxonomic attribution of the Matalascañas footprints. A sampling of 4 stratigraphic units, including the paleosol where the footprint surface is located, was conducted in 2021 to realise Optically Stimulated Luminescence dating. According to this new dating, the footprint surface is dated at 295.8 ± 17 ka, nearly 200,000 years older than the initial dating of the surface. This new dating to the Middle Pleistocene, at the transition between MIS 9 and MIS 8 has a considerable impact on the taxonomic attribution of the Matalascañas footprints. While the first dating at 106,000 years clearly implied an attribution to Neandertals, taxa well known during this period in Eurasia from both skeletal remains and archaeological artifacts, the species attribution for footprints dating to nearly 300,000 years ago is much less consensual. Indeed, the evolution of hominins in Europe during the Middle Pleistocene remains poorly known, the fossil record being particularly scarce during this period and in particular for the MIS 9 and MIS 8. The Matalascañas footprints represent the only paleoanthropological material discovered in the Iberian Peninsula for these isotopic stages. According to studies carried out on Middle Pleistocene European fossil material, some hypotheses point to the presence of a single evolutionary lineage (that of the Neandertals), while others consider that several contemporary evolutionary lineages coexisted. Therefore, the Matalascañas footprints could have been left by pre-Neandertals or by another evolutionary lineage. These new dates thus highlight an important dilemma in the study of hominin footprints: attributing a taxon to footprints only on the basis of chronological context for lesser-known periods can be highly uncertain. 
<br/><br/>Mayoral, E., Duveau, J., Santos, A., Rodríguez Ramírez, A., Morales, J.A., Díaz-Delgado, R., Rivera-Silva, J., Gómez-Olivencia, A., Díaz-Martínez, I. Dating the hominin footprints from Matalascañas (Spain): taxonomic and palaeoanthropological implications [Póster]. Scientific Reports 12 (1), 17505. https://doi.<br/>org/10.1038/s41598-022-22524-2.