New palaeoecological insights for the early human occupation in Europe: amphibians and reptiles from the Early Pleistocene of Pirro Nord 13 (Apricena, southern Italy)

The Early Pleistocene site of Pirro Nord 13, dated between 1.6 and 1.3 Ma, is one of the fissures of the karstic complex of the Pirro Nord quarry (Apricena, Foggia, southern Italy), a well-known locality for its rich and well-preserved palaeontological record. Among the identified sites, Pirro Nord 13 has a particular importance because it documents the largest amount of human evidence at Pirro Nord and represents one of the earliest human records of western Europe. In this study, we fully described for the first time the fossil amphibians and reptiles from Pirro Nord 13, which are hosted at the Museo di Geologia e Paleontologia collections (MGPT-PU) at Torino University (Turin, Italy), and used them to perform quantitative palaeoecological reconstructions. The resulted herpetofaunal assemblage is composed by a total of 13 species: four anurans (Pelobates syriacus, Bufotes viridis gr., Bufo gr. B. bufo and Pelophylax cf. esculentus/ridibundus), three chelonians (Testudo hermanni, Emys orbicularis and Mauremys sp.), three lizards (cf. Podarcis sp., Lacerta s.l. and Blanus sp.), and three snakes (Natrix gr. N. natrix, Coronella cf. C. austriaca, and Zamenis gr. Z. longissimus). In order to address the palaeoecological reconstruction, we applied the Mutual Ecogeographic Range method with the Uncertain Distribution Area-Occupied Distribution Area technique to obtain temperature and precipitation estimates, and the Habitat Weighting method to infer the surrounding environment. The Pirro Nord 13 climate (USs A-C) was reconstructed as cold and semi-humid, with lower temperatures (−4.4 °C) and similar precipitations (+45 mm) levels to the present-day, but with a less pronounced seasonality. The inferred landscape was reconstructed as dominated by open environments primarily composed of open-dry habitats (29.59 %), however with the presence of woodland (19.12 %) along water bodies or temporary swamps (21.82 %). The results obtained provide significant insights into the ecological tolerance of early hominins, suggesting that they were able to cope with challenging climatic and environmental conditions, and contribute to our understanding of their distribution and the delays observed in their dispersals across the European continent.