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A huge horde of mixed animal bones, including human remains, have been found in an ancient lava tube in Saudi Arabia.
The carved cave, called Umm Jirsan, is a vast system of lava conduits beneath the volcanic fields of Harrat Khaybar in the northwest of the country.
Umm Jirsan stretches for 1.5 kilometers (almost a mile), making it the longest known lava tube in Arabia. In these extended shadows, the wild creatures have been occupied.
In a new study, researchers report the discovery of hundreds of thousands of bones belonging to at least 14 different types of animals, such as cattle, horses, camels, rodents, and more. And some of those bones are human.
Rear chamber of Umm Jirsan. (Stewart et al., AAS, 2021)
“This 1.5 km long lava tube is full of hundreds of thousands of beautifully preserved animal remains,” said zooarchaeologist Mathew Stewart of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Germany. posted on twitter.
“But why?”
According to the researchers, this massive horde of bones was most likely taken over by striped hyenas (Hyena hyena), whose own skeletal remains were also found in the cave, along with their fossilized excrement (called coprolites).
“These critters are great collectors of bones, which they transport to dens to be eaten, fed to the young or put in cache”, Stewart explains, noting that the epic assemblage represents a collection for the ages.
“Umm Jirsan’s material has accumulated over the past 7,000 years, attesting to the excellent bone preservation conditions in the lava tube.”
Striped hyena. (Rushikesh Deshmukh DOP / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)
Although animal bones have been unearthed in the Umm Jirsan lava tube before this, there is still a lot that we do not yet understand about the taxonomy of the species in the cave, nor what these remains might. tell us about the paleoecology in the area.
This ancient lair of hyenas, however, is not just a relic of the ancient past. During a previous investigation of the lava tube in 2007, researchers heard noises of “growling” in the cave, suggesting that Umm Jirsan remains open for business.
It is possible that other types of animals have gathered the collection of giant bones, such as foxes or wolves. But the team says the weight of evidence points to hyenas: Wolves typically don’t scatter bones far from killing sites, and foxes cannot easily transport or consume prey this large.
In addition, there are many marks on the bones that suggest the gnawing and digesting processes of hyenas.
Bones scattered around Umm Jirsan. (Stewart et al., AAS, 2021)
“Overall, the large assemblage size, overabundance and intensive processing of ungulate limb bones, abundant hyena coprolites, and the presence of juvenile hyena and human cranial remains suggest that Umm Jirsan served primarily as a striped hyena’s lair and, on occasion, as a maternal den, “the researchers write in their study.
While much is still unknown about Umm Jirsan, researchers are hopeful that this macabre tomb can serve as a time capsule to shed light on the paleoecology and prehistory of ancient Arabia.
“In a region where bone preservation is very, very poor, sites like Umm Jirsan offer an exciting new resource”, Stewart says.
“This study is just the tip of the iceberg.”
The results are reported in Archaeological and anthropological sciences.
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