For permission to conduct this study, we thank HRH Prince Sultan bin Salman, President of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage (SCTH) and Professor Ali I. Al-Ghabban, Vice President. We thank Jamal Omar and Sultan Al-Fagir of the SCTH for their support and assistance with the field investigations. Particular thanks to Abdullah Alsharekh of King Saud University for discussions and long term support. We thank Heidi Eager, Oshan Wedage, Marco Bernal, Patrick Cuthbertson, Patrick Roberts, Margaret Ashley-Veall and Helena White (Palaeodeserts) and Saleh A. Soubhi, Mohammed A. Haptari, Adel H. Matari, Abdu M. Al-Masary, Ahmad A. Bahameem and Ammar Jamal Jamalaldeen (Saudi Geological Survey) for their contributions in the field. Sandra Chapman and Pip Brewer provided access to comparative specimens at the Natural History Museum (Palaeontology), as did Jo Cooper and Judith White at the Bird Group in Tring. CMS thanks Jo Cooper for helpful discussion. Malgosia Nowak-Kemp and Eliza Howlett assisted with access to specimens in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH) and CMS is grateful to Darren Mann and Bethany Columbo for permission and assistance while working in the osteological collections. Jess Rippengal helped with access to the reference collections in Cambridge, as did Malcolm Pearch at the Harrison Institute (Sevenoaks). We thank Nigel Larkin for his conservation work on TAG14/301 and his advice on the identification of hyaena coprolites
; discussions with Simon Parfitt were also particularly helpful in this regard. Juha Saarinen kindly measured the mesowear angles of the elephant molars, and provided discussion. We thank Ian Cartwright for the photographs of specimens in Figs. 9A and B and 12A and B. This study also benefited from discussions with Chris Jarvis (OUMNH), Matt Freidman and Roger Benson (University of Oxford). Heidi Eager and Laura Bishop provided valuable comments on an early draft and we thank Denis Geraads and Robin Dennell for thorough and constructive reviews of the manuscript. R.G. and M.D. thank L. Kinsley, RSES, The Australian National University, for his assistance with the mass spectrometric measurements. The ESR dating study has received funding from a Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship of the European Union?s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) awarded to MD under REA Grant Agreement n° PIOF-GA-2013-626474. MDP acknowledges financial support from the European Research Council (grant no. 295719, to MDP) and from the SCTH. Author contributions: CMS wrote the paper, with contributions from all authors
; fossil analysis was undertaken by CMS (except elephant fossils) and AL (elephant fossils)
; Stratigraphic analysis was undertaken by AP
; OSL dating was undertaken by LCB
; U-series and ESR dating was undertaken by MD and RG
; Mapping was undertaken by PB and site survey was conducted by PB, CMS and RJ
; RJ collated fossil survey data
; study was conceived by MDP and supervised in the field by AA-O and RJ (2013) and AA-O, KSMAM, CMS, ISZ, YAM and AMM (2014).
School of Archaeology, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Hayes House 75 George Street, Oxford, United Kingdom; Earth Sciences Department, Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom; Department of Geography, King's College London, Strand, London, United Kingdom; Hazara University, Karakoram Hwy, Dhodial, Pakistan; Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), Paseo de Atapuerca 3, Burgos, Spain; Environmental Futures Research Institute, Griffith University, Nathan Campus, 170 Kessels RoadQLD, Australia; Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage, P.O Box 66680, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Saudi Geological Survey, Palaeontology Unit, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Recommended Citation:
Stimpson C.M.,Lister A.,Parton A.,et al. Middle Pleistocene vertebrate fossils from the Nefud Desert, Saudi Arabia: Implications for biogeography and palaeoecology[J]. Quaternary Science Reviews,2016-01-01,143