Paul C H Albers

Over 60 years ago, stone tools and remains of megafauna were discovered on the Southeast Asian islands of Flores, Sulawesi and Luzon, and a Middle Pleistocene colonization by Homo erectus was initially proposed to have occurred on these islands1,2,3,4. However, until the discovery of Homo floresiensis in 2003, claims of the presence of archaic hominins on Wallacean islands were hypothetical owing to the absence of in situ fossils and/or stone artefacts that were excavated from well-documented stratigraphic contexts, or because secure numerical dating methods of these sites were lacking. As a consequence, these claims were generally treated with scepticism5. Here we describe the results of recent excavations at Kalinga in the Cagayan Valley of northern Luzon in the Philippines that have yielded 57 stone tools associated with an almost-complete disarticulated skeleton of Rhinoceros philippinensis, which shows clear signs of butchery, together with other fossil fauna remains attributed to stegodon, Philippine brown deer, freshwater turtle and monitor lizard. All finds originate from a clay-rich bone bed that was dated to between 777 and 631 thousand years ago using electron-spin resonance methods that were applied to tooth enamel and fluvial quartz. This evidence pushes back the proven period of colonization6 of the Philippines by hundreds of thousands of years, and furthermore suggests that early overseas dispersal in Island South East Asia by premodern hominins took place several times during the Early and Middle Pleistocene stages1,2,3,4. The Philippines therefore may have had a central role in southward movements into Wallacea, not only of Pleistocene megafauna7, but also of archaic hominins.

ABSTRACT Two partial postcranial skeletons from the Lower Muschelkalk (early Anisian) of Winterswijk, The Netherlands, are described in detail. The specimens were assigned to basal Pistosauroidea, presumably to cf. Cymatosaurus or a closely related taxon. Cymatosaurus is currently the earliest member of the Pistosauroidea and is only known from skull material. Taxonomical assignment is based on humerus morphology and histology, and on morphological differences from other Sauropterygia (Nothosauria and Pachypleurosauria).

Generally, the location of Middle and Late Iron Age settlements reflects an avoidance
of former funerary areas (cf. Gerritsen 2003, 60; 63). In their characterisation
of landscape use for the southern Netherlands, Roymans and Theuws (1999,
13-16) describe a dynamic settlement system for the Urnfield period, in which
periodically new areas were settled yet simultaneously the urnfields remained
stable central entities within territories (op. cit., 13-15, cf. Roymans & Kortlang
1999, 37; Kortlang 1999, 111). In choosing new Urnfield period settlement locations,
it is mostly previously uninhabited and former settlement areas (Roymans &
Kortlang 1999, 39 note 15) rather than older funerary landscapes that were reused.
Remarkably, it is rarely the case that Middle and Late Iron Age habitation takes
place amidst, or ‘on top’ of urnfield monuments. The few exceptions mainly originate
from the southern Netherlands, such as the sites of Someren, Haps, Mierlo-
Hout and Oosterhout. At Someren and Haps, Middle Iron Age habitation took
place directly adjacent to – and in parts overlapping with – Early Iron Age urnfield
structures (for Someren see Roymans & Kortlang 1999, 41 fig. 3; Kortlang 1999,
17; Gerritsen 2003, 61 fig. 3.18, for Haps see Verwers 1972, 32; 36; 122). At
Mierlo-Hout, Iron Age house-plans and outbuildings are situated directly adjacent
to an Early-Middle Iron Age urnfield (Tol 1999, 93 fig. 6; 103) and are interpreted
as reflecting “related settlement traces” (Tol 1999, 89), i.e. suggesting contemporaneity.
At the site of Oosterhout Late Iron Age habitation gradually takes place on top of the adjacent urnfield (Roessingh et al. 2012a, 58 fig. 5.1; 2012b, 134
fig. 6.29).