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Abstract
The southern African late Pliocene to early Pleistocene carnivore guild was much larger
than that of the present day. Understanding how this guild may have functioned is
important for the reconstruction of carnivore-hominin interactions and to assess the
potential for hominin scavenging in southern Africa. In modern ecosystems, the coexistence
of larger carnivore species is constrained by several factors, which include high
levels of interspecific competition. Here, the composition of the fossil carnivore
guild is examined using Sterkfontein Member 4 (Cradle of Humankind, South Africa)
as a case study. Sterkfontein Member 4 contains 10 larger carnivore taxa (body mass
>21.5 kg) and may also contain two Australopithecus species. Two possible causes of
higher numbers of carnivore species in the South African fossil record are initially
considered. First, that there is a bias introduced through comparing assemblages of
differing sizes; second, carnivore biodiversity may have been artificially inflated
due to previous taxonomic splitting of carnivore species, such as Crocuta. These possibilities
are rejected and modern ecological data are used to construct a simple spatial model
to determine how many carnivores could have co-existed. Although the resulting model
indicates that the carnivore taxa present in Member 4 could have co-occurred, modern
ecological studies indicate that it is highly unlikely that they would have co-existed
simultaneously. Considering the complex depositional processes that operate in the
southern African cave sites, it is proposed that the larger carnivore guild observed
in the Sterkfontein Member 4 fossil assemblage is a palimpsest created by time-averaging.
In light of this, we suggest that sites which have a large number of carnivore taxa
should be examined for time-averaging, while those sites which have relatively few
species may be a better reflection of carnivore communities.