Rare crested rat subfossils unveil Afro-Eurasian ecological corridors synchronous with early human dispersals

Abstract

with the eastern Mediterranean (16, 23). While the paleoenvironmental interpretation of the well-known Mediterranean Levantine fossil record continues to be scrutinized and debated (16, 17, 24–26), there is no record of faunal movement in the Dead Sea arid areas during the Late Pleistocene (1, 27). Here, we report evidence that the southeastern Levant, today blocked by a rain shadow desert, had more densely vegetated habitats in the Late Pleistocene that supported African faunal immigrants synchronously with early human dispersals. Recent excavations (28) and surveys (29) in the Cave of the Skulls (CoS), in the southern Judean Desert, have yielded exceptionally wellpreserved fossils of a subspecies of the eastern African crested rat, Lophiomys imhausi maremortum subspecies nova (subsp. nov.) (Figs. 1–3), dated to between ∼42,000 y ago (ka) and at least 103 ka. The subspecific status is sustained by paleogenomic data, which indicate low molecular divergence (<2%) between the Levantine population and the extant populations from eastern Africa. A few specimens dated to >44 and ∼112 ka from Significance The extent and timing of paleoenvironmental connections between Africa and Eurasia during the last glacial and interglacial periods are key issues in relation to early dispersals of Homo sapiens out of Africa. However, direct evidence of synchronous faunal dispersals is sparse. We report the discovery near the Dead Sea of subfossils belonging to an ancient relative of the eastern African crested rat dated to between ∼42,000 and at least