Lars Werdelin

Abstract The time interval between about three and two million years ago is a critical period in human evolution—this is when the genera Homo and Paranthropus first appear in the fossil record and a possible ancestor of these genera, Australopithecus afarensis, disappears. In eastern Africa, attempts to test hypotheses about the adaptive contexts that led to these events are limited by a paucity of fossiliferous exposures that capture this interval.

Abstract The timing of the initial dispersal of hominins into Eurasia is unclear. Current evidence indicates hominins were present at Dmanisi, Georgia by 1.8 million years ago (Ma), but other ephemeral traces of hominins across Eurasia predate Dmanisi. However, no hominin remains have been definitively described from Europe until ~1.4 Ma. Here we present evidence of hominin activity at the site of Grăunceanu, Romania in the form of multiple cut-marked bones.

Hyaenidae is a family of considerable palaeontological interest, due to their occurrence in many Miocene-Pleistocene sites in Eurasia, Africa and North America (Kurtén, 1968; Werdelin & Solounias, 1991; Werdelin & Solounias, 1996; Turner, Antón & Werdelin, 2008) and the importance of the three larger species of hyaenids for their respective ecosystems (Rieger, 1981; Mills, 1982; Turner, Antón & Werdelin, 2008; Hayssen & Noonan, 2021). The pattern of their evolution in Eurasia is relatively clear.