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Fossil bird data (community composition and taphonomic profiles) are used here to infer the environmental context of the Oldowan-Acheulean transitional period at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. This is the first comprehensive report on the Middle Bed II avifauna and includes fossils excavated by the Olduvai Geochronology and Archaeology Project (OGAP) and recently rediscovered fossils collected by Mary Leakey. Crane, ibis, darter, owl, raptor, crow, and vulture are reported from Bed II for the first time. The presence of these taxa, absent earlier in this Bed, point to a general opening and drying of the landscape with grassland and open woodland expansion. Taxa associated with dense, emergent wetland vegetation, such as dabbling ducks and rails, are uncommon and less diverse than earlier in Bed II. This suggests more mature wetlands with clearer waters. Cormorants continue to be common, but are less diverse. Cormorants and other roosting taxa provide evidence of trees in the area. Compared to lowermost Bed II, the Middle to Upper Bed II landscape is interpreted here as more open and drier (but not necessarily more arid), with matured wetlands, scattered trees, and a greater expansion of grasslands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Plio-Pleistocene avifaunal communities are used to reconstruct Lowermost Bed II landscapes at the early hominin site of Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. These deposits are laterally extensive, have strong chronostratigraphic control, and were excavated using a landscape archaeological approach. Such factors allow for horizontal spatial-correlation of avian communities across the paleolandscape over a geologically short time frame (approximately 65,000 years). Lowermost Bed II avifaunal communities point to an extensive freshwater wetland system across the extent of paleo-Lake Olduvai's eastern margin. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Taxonomic and taphonomic data on 236 fossil bird bone specimens are applied to paleolandscape models and reconstructions developed by the Olduvai Landscape Paleoanthropology Project (OLAPP) for Late Pliocene (1.84 Ma) hominid bearing deposits in the FLK Complex at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Shorebirds dominate the avifauna but the occurrence and densities of different avian ecotypes vary across the landscape in ways that corroborate OLAPP reconstructions of wetland, peninsular and riverine landscape facets in this area of the paleo-Lake Olduvai Basin. Taphonomic profiles are based on observations of modern bird bone in similar environments of Tanzania. The taphonomy suggests habitat patchiness within these delineated landscape facets. Results support the use of fossil bird assemblages, even small assemblages thereof, for aiding in and refining paleoenvironmental reconstructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]