Fossil Bovidae from the Hominini-bearing site of Cooper’s D (Bloubank Valley, South Africa): implications for Paranthropus robustus Broom, 1938 and early Homo Linnaeus, 1758 habitat preferences

This dataset contains the digitized treatments in Plazi based on the original journal article Hanon, Raphaël, Péan, Stéphane, Patou-Mathis, Marylène, Prat, Sandrine, Rector, Amy, Steininger, Christine (2022): Fossil Bovidae from the Hominini-bearing site of Cooper’s D (Bloubank Valley, South Africa): implications for Paranthropus robustus Broom, 1938 and early Homo Linnaeus, 1758 habitat preferences. Comptes Rendus Palevol 21 (21): 431-450, DOI: 10.5852/cr-palevol2022v21a21, URL: doi.org/10.5852/cr-palevol2022v21a21 ABSTRACT The Cooper’s D deposit has been dated by U-Pb at a maximum age of 1.37 Ma ± 0.113 and has yielded seven Hominini remains, six of them are attributed to the Southern African endemic species Paranthropus robustus Broom, 1938.

However, the taxonomic composition of the faunal assemblage recovered at this site, especially ruminants, remains poorly understood. This paper updates the previous palaeontological and biochronological works and provides the first taxonomic description and paleoecological analysis of the whole bovid material from Cooper’s D. We propose a minimum age of 1.0 Ma for the Cooper’s D bone accumulation. Thus, we conclude that the assemblage accumulated between 1.375 ± 0.113 and 1.0 Ma based on the complementary results obtained from radiometric dates and biochronology.