http://hdl.handle.net/10900/155137 Tue, 12 May 2026 12:07:28 GMT 2026-05-12T12:07:28Z https://publikationen.uni-tuebingen.de:443/xmlui/bitstream/id/f721aa8e-8700-4a16-98c4-cc533bcefb4f/ http://hdl.handle.net/10900/155137 http://hdl.handle.net/10900/163021 Human Evolution at the CROSSROADS: Research in Greece and beyond. Proceedings of the Closing Symposium, February 2022 Harvati, Katerina; Ioannidou, Melania South East Europe has long been hypothesized as a principal Pleistocene dispersal corridor for human migrations in and out of Europe. It also comprises one of the three main European Mediterranean refugia, where plant, animal, and human populations are thought to have persisted throughout glacial intervals when they disappeared from more inhospitable regions further north. Despite the biogeographic importance of the region in human evolution, paleoanthropological research has largely been neglected there until recently, resulting in a critical gap in the puzzle of Eurasian human evolutionary history. Recent research has sparked renewed interest in the paleoanthropology of Greece, with several new discoveries indicating the importance of the region for deep prehistory. The ERC Consolidator project ‘Human Evolution at the Crossroads’ (CROSSROADS), awarded to Katerina Harvati in 2016 and running from 2017 to 2022, builds on earlier work conducted by Harvati and colleagues in the framework of her previous ERC Starting project ‘Paleoanthropology at the Gates of Europe’ (PaGE). CROSSROADS concentrated on the earlier parts of the Paleolithic, aiming to help address hypotheses about the earliest human settlement of Europe and the evolution and adaptations of early European hominins. Several research directions were pursued: new fieldwork aimed to locate new sites dating from the Lower and Middle Paleolithic and to identify traces of early human presence and activity; a dating program was initiated to develop a chronological framework for the Paleolithic in Greece; multi-proxy paleoenvironmental reconstruction was undertaken to provide insights on the adaptations of Pleistocene humans in the region; and existing hominin fossils were re-examined with state of the art methodological approaches to shed light on their taxonomic identity and their paleobiology. This edited volume collects twenty-eight contributions presented at the closing symposium of the ERC Consolidator project ‘CROSSROADS’, which took place in Tübingen in February 2022, shortly before the conclusion of the project. As such, it represents a large part of the work conducted under the ‘CROSSROADS’ research umbrella, showcasing the activities and results of the project. Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/163021 2025-07-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/156334 Introduction to the Volume Harvati, Katerina Given the ‘CROSSROADS’ research agenda, there could be multiple ways to organise the contributions in this volume. A temporal and geographic principle, rather than thematic, was chosen, in order to best showcase related work (for example, the multiple lines of research undertaken in the Megalopolis Basin). The book is organised in three sections: section one collects six contributions from earlier periods, from the late Miocene to the early Pleistocene, represented in Northern Greece; section two is by far the largest one, presenting seventeen contributions on the Middle Pleistocene Megalopolis Basin; and section three focuses on the late Middle and Late Pleistocene, with four contributions from Greece and beyond. Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/156334 2025-07-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/156333 Geometric morphometric analysis of the intermediate phalanx of Ouranopithecus macedoniensis—a pilot study Kunze, Jana; Karakostis, Fotios Alexandros; Ioannidou, Melania; Koufos, George; Harvati, Katerina Ravin de la Pluie (RPl) in the Axios valley, Greece, is one of the three localities where the material of the Late Miocene ape Ouranopithecus macedoniensis has been found to date (de Bonis et al., 1974; de Bonis and Melentis, 1978; Koufos and de Bonis, 2006; Koufos et al., 2016). The material from RPl is rich; it includes maxillary and mandibular remains, multiple isolated teeth, and just a few postcranial specimens, which to date represent the only postcranial remains associated with this species: two phalanges (proximal: RPl-86, intermediate: RPl-87). A first analysis of the phalanges was conducted in 2014 (de Bonis and Koufos, 2014). In that study, de Bonis and Koufos followed a comparative approach, using multivariate analyses of linear measurements to assess morphological similarities to extant and fossil primates. De Bonis and Koufos concluded that both phalanges likely belong to the hand, but that an allocation to the foot cannot be excluded due to the lack of comparative material from the same species. However, since the phalanges are the only postcranial remains associated with this species so far, identifying them as either manual or pedal phalanges, as well as allocating them to a ray, is crucial. Having this information would allow for further, more detailed examinations, such as more accurate comparative analyses and reconstruction of locomotor behavior. Therefore, the goal of this study is to contribute to the identification of the intermediate phalanx RPl-87 through the application of three-dimensional (3D) geometric morphometrics (GM). Geometric morphometrics is a statistical analysis of form (shape and size) in which, in contrast to traditional morphometrics, geometric information of the investigated structures can be retained throughout the analysis to provide a more detailed evaluation of shape differences (Slice, 2007). By comparing the shape of the better-preserved phalanx RPl-87 with manual and pedal intermediate phalanges of extant primates, we aim to address the following research questions: 1. Does RPl-87 belong to the foot or the hand? 2. What ray can RPl-87 be assigned to? 3. Does the specimen show morphological affinities to extant primates? Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/156333 2025-07-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/156332 Rhinocerotidae remains from the Lower Pleistocene site of Tsiotra Vryssi, Greece: Preliminary results Chitoglou, Krystalia; Pandolfi, Luca; Konidaris, George; Kostopoulos, Dimitris Pleistocene rhinocerotids are poorly investigated in Greece, compared to the Miocene ones. The limited systematic studies, as well as the scanty and fragmentary material allow only partial classifications, frequently at the genus level, i.e., Stephanorhinus sp. Based on the recent review by Giaourtsakis (2022), during the Pleistocene, rhinocerotids were represented by two genera in Greece; Coelodonta and Stephanorhinus. The most common representative of the genus Stephanorhinus is S. etruscus, which has been reported more or less certainly from the Early Pleistocene (middle Villafranchian to Epivillafranchian) faunas of Kalamoto 1 and 2, Krimni, Livakos, Molykrio, Psychiko, Richea, Aivaliki, Tourkovounia 3-5 and Vatera DS. The Middle–Late Pleistocene species, S. hemitoechus, is recorded in the localities of Penios and Petralona (Athanassiou, 2011; Symeonidis et al., 2006; Tsoukala, 2018; Giaourtsakis, 2022), whereas S. jeanvireti is present in some Pliocene localities, such as Angelochori, Milia and Saint George Priporos (Guérin and Tsoukala, 2013; Tsoukala, 2018). This contribution presents the preliminary results of the study of the Rhinocerotidae remains from the fossiliferous site of Tsiotra Vryssi (TSR) in the Mygdonia Basin (Northern Greece). The site, discovered in 2014, belongs to the upper parts of the Gerakarou Formation and yielded a late Villafranchian vertebrate fauna dated between 1.78 Ma and ~1.5 Ma (Konidaris et al., 2021). Among the mammalian remains, Rhinocerotidae are represented by numerous specimens, and their study aims to contribute to the taxonomy of the Greek Pleistocene rhinoceroses as well as to the biochronological and biogeographical distribution of the genus Stephanorhinus in Europe. Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/156332 2025-07-01T00:00:00Z