Ancient Aurochs and Rhino Fossils Unearthed in Sahara, Shedding Light on Climate History

The fossils discovered at various sites in Oued el Haï, in northwestern Morocco, will allow paleontologists to define the era when the ancestor of the current white rhinoceros replaced the older species and also to know what the climate was like at that time, reports La Nacion. In detail, they will seek to know the animals and plants that lived in this area at the time and under what conditions of humidity and temperature.

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"These discoveries allow us to know how the desertification process of the Sahara took place, because it did not happen overnight. Continuing to find fossils corresponding to different eras also allows us to reconstruct what the climate was like in the region and to improve the information for future climate models," explains Jan van der Made, researcher at the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN-CSIC), and member of the international research team on these fossils.

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The Sahara began to form millions of years ago due to climate change. It is a region where life is no longer possible today for most large mammals. But it is important to know which species populated it and at what periods, he adds. "It is curious to see how ’C. simum’ went from life south of the Sahara to the north and occupied the space of ’C. mauritanicum’. This happened in one of the two periods with a more humid climate, between 85,000 and 80,000 or between 105,000 and 100,000 years, and it was possible because the Sahara region had appropriate vegetation during these periods," analyzes Van der Made.

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For the researcher, knowing how the fauna of North Africa has evolved helps scientists to improve and better calibrate the climate models of the region. The results of this research conducted by the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA), the National Center for the Study of Human Evolution (CENIEH) and the University Mohamed I of Oujda, have been published in the journal "Historical Biology". The project, developed in Morocco, is funded among others by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage of Morocco and the research groups of the Generalitat de Catalunya.