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Link to original content: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25295956
Middle pleistocene human remains from Tourville-la-Rivière (Normandy, France) and their archaeological context - PubMed Skip to main page content
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. 2014 Oct 8;9(10):e104111.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0104111. eCollection 2014.

Middle pleistocene human remains from Tourville-la-Rivière (Normandy, France) and their archaeological context

Jean-Philippe Faivre  1 , Bruno Maureille  1 , Priscilla Bayle  2 , Isabelle Crevecoeur  1 , Mathieu Duval  3 , Rainer Grün  4 , Céline Bemilli  5 , Stéphanie Bonilauri  6 , Sylvie Coutard  7 , Maryelle Bessou  2 , Nicole Limondin-Lozouet  8 , Antoine Cottard  9 , Thierry Deshayes  9 , Aurélie Douillard  9 , Xavier Henaff  10 , Caroline Pautret-Homerville  9 , Les Kinsley  4 , Erik Trinkaus  11
Affiliations

Middle pleistocene human remains from Tourville-la-Rivière (Normandy, France) and their archaeological context

Jean-Philippe Faivre et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Despite numerous sites of great antiquity having been excavated since the end of the 19th century, Middle Pleistocene human fossils are still extremely rare in northwestern Europe. Apart from the two partial crania from Biache-Saint-Vaast in northern France, all known human fossils from this period have been found from ten sites in either Germany or England. Here we report the discovery of three long bones from the same left upper limb discovered at the open-air site of Tourville-la-Rivière in the Seine Valley of northern France. New U-series and combined US-ESR dating on animal teeth produced an age range for the site of 183 to 236 ka. In combination with paleoecological indicators, they indicate an age toward the end of MIS 7. The human remains from Tourville-la-Rivière are attributable to the Neandertal lineage based on morphological and metric analyses. An abnormal crest on the left humerus represents a deltoid muscle enthesis. Micro- and or macro-traumas connected to repetitive movements similar to those documented for professional throwing athletes could be origin of abnormality.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Location of the open-area site of Tourville-la-Rivière and other Northwest European (north to 45°N and west to 16°E) contexts, contemporaries of lower and middle Pleistocene (MIS-10-6), that have yielded human remains.
Figure 2
Figure 2. The Tourville-la-Rivière site.
A: general view of the site during excavation; B: general stratigraphy of Tourville-la-Rivière (after , modified); C: stratigraphy of the excavated area.
Figure 3
Figure 3. The Tourville human remains in situ.
The posterior and medial surfaces were the first to be made visible for the radial (# 1175) and ulnar (# 1176) diaphyses, respectively, while the postero-medial surface of the humeral diaphysis (#1174) and posterior surface of the distal extremity were the first to be exposed. A: distal extremity of the humerus, posterior face; B: fragments of the distal portion of the humeral diaphysis. Several elements have since been refitted to the diaphysis (see Figure 4); C: the humeral diaphysis, medial to posteromedial face, proximal extremity to the north-west; D: radius, posterior face, proximal extremity to the north; E: ulna, medial face, proximal extremity to the north. Dotted lines indicate the alignment of the broken part of the distal and proximal extremities of the ulna and radius.
Figure 4
Figure 4. The Tourville left upper limb remains.
Top: humerus; bottom left: ulna; bottom right: radius. For all the bones: A: anterior view; M: medial view; P: posterior view; L: lateral view.
Figure 5
Figure 5. The Tourville 1 human remains in anterior view placed adjacent to the left arm bones of the Tabun 1 female Neandertal.
The humeri are aligned according to the medial supracondylar crest, the ulnae using the brachialis tuberosity, and the radii using the radial tuberosity. Scale 5 cm.
Figure 6
Figure 6. The enthesopathy modifying the posterior fasciculus of the deltoid muscle on the Tourville left humerus.
Left: virtual reconstruction of the affected diaphyseal segment between horizontal cross-sections n° 110 and 310. In green: cortical bone, in blue: medullary cavity volume. Right: horizontal CT-scan of the same segment. Note both the substantial crest, which develops laterally and posteriorly, and the absence of any important relief at the area around insertion of the anterior muscle fasciculus.
Figure 7
Figure 7. CT-based 3D mapping of the topographic distribution of the cortical bone at the proximal part of the humeral diaphysis (A) compared to the equivalent area (B, 6 cm below the deltoid tuberosity) on the humerus of the Krapina # 165 Pre-Neandertal (NESPOS data base, [40]) (B).
Cortical thickness topographic variation was rendered using a chromatic scale increasing from dark blue (thin) to red (thick). The arrows indicate the position of the deltoid tuberosity in both shafts. a: anterior view, b: posterior view, c: medial view, d: lateral view.
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Grants and funding

This study was funded by Inrap (http://www.inrap.fr), the UMR5199 PACEA - Université de Bordeaux, CNRS, MCC (http://www.pacea.u-bordeaux1.fr/), the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS; http://www.cnrs.fr). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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