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A new canid species (Carnivora: Canidae) from the Plio-Pleistocene hominin-bearing site of Kromdraai (Cradle of Humankind, Gauteng, South Africa)

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Abstract

The Plio-Pleistocene site of Kromdraai, covering a chronological range from 1.8 Ma (Kromdraai A Locality) up to older than 2.0 Ma (Kromdraai Member 2), (Cradle of Humankind, Gauteng, South Africa) has been investigating since the first half of the XXth century. These researches have led to the discovery of the type specimen of Paranthropus robustus. Kromdraai is also characterized by an extremely rich bone accumulation (including more than 10000 remains with more than 4800 from the recent field works). Carnivores are highly diverse including Felidae, Hyaenidae, Herpestidae, Viverridae, Mustelidae and Canidae. Based on 27 newly discovered dental and postcranial specimens, a new canid species is described. Canis hewitti sp. nov. is comparable in size to the extant African hunting dog Lycaon pictus but it differs significantly from this species in dental features that are typical of the genus Canis including the m1 with a trigonid of about two-thirds the length of the crown, a metaconid clearly dissociated from the protoconid and a talonid consisting in a hypoconid and an entoconid. Its premolars suggest a certain specialization in meat-cutting (long and thin p4 with a high protoconid backwardly flanked of a well-developed cusp followed by an accessory small denticle). C. hewitti appears as the potential ancestor of the more robust southern African Canis atrox from Kromdraai A (ca. 1.8 Ma).

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Cradle Management Authority, the South African Heritage Ressources Agency and R. Lotz for their continuous support. JBF also thanks S. Potze, L. Kgasi, S. Badenhorst, W. Van Zyl (Ditsong Museum, Pretoria) and B. Zipfel (Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg) who gave us access to the modern and fossil samples under their care. JBF also thanks R. Hautefort and B. Lans for their help with the photographs presented in this study as well as B. Chadelle (UMR5608 TRACES Toulouse) for his help in preparing maps. JBF is grateful to J.-P. Brugal (CNRS-UMR7269 LAMPEA) and O. Mwebi (National Museums Kenya, Nairobi) for their help providing data of the extant wild dogs, and D. Geraads (CNRS-UMR7207 CR2P) for the comments and data he provided to us to improve our paper. This research is supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Institut des Déserts et des Steppes (Paris) and the Institut Picot de Lapeyrouse (Toulouse). JBF was supported by the Erasmus Mundus AESOP+ program (Application ES15PD0043). Finally, we would like to thank the reviewers for their insightful comments that improved this manuscript.

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  1. LAMPEA (UMR 7269; CNRS-Aix Marseille Université, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication), MMSH 5 rue du Château de l’Horloge, 13094, Aix-en-Provence, France

    Jean-Baptiste Fourvel

  2. IRAMAT-CRP2A (UMR 5060; CNRS-Université Bordeaux Montaigne), Maison de l’Archéologie, Université Bordeaux Montaigne, 33607, Pessac cedex, France

    Nicolas Frerebeau

  3. Centre de Recherche et d’Études Pour l’art Préhistorique, MSHS-Toulouse (UAR 3414; CNRS, Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées), 5 allée Antonio Machado, 31058, Toulouse cedex 9, France

    Nicolas Frerebeau

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  1. Jean-Baptiste Fourvel
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JBF has conceived and designed the analysis, performed the analysis and wrote the paper. NF has performed the analysis and wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Jean-Baptiste Fourvel.

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Fourvel, JB., Frerebeau, N. A new canid species (Carnivora: Canidae) from the Plio-Pleistocene hominin-bearing site of Kromdraai (Cradle of Humankind, Gauteng, South Africa). PalZ 97, 163–177 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12542-022-00628-4

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