Jordi AGUST͹, Hugues-Alexandre BLAIN², Marc FURIÓ³, Roger DE MARFÁ⁴, Andrés SANTOS-CUBEDO³, Bienvenido MARTÍNEZ-NAVARRO¹, Isidro TORO⁵

1. ICREA-IPHES (Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social), Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Tarragona 43005 Spain; 2. IPHES (Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social), Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Tarragona 43005 Spain; 3. Institut Català de Paleontologia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Sabadell 08201 Spain; 4. Departament d’Estratigrafia, Paleontologia i Geociències Marines, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona 08028 Spain; 5. Museo Arqueológico y Etnológico de Granada, Granada 18010 Spain.

FIRST PARAGRAPH:  In addition to Dmanisi in Georgia and the Atapuerca karstic complex in central Spain, the Guadix-Baza Basin (Granada, SE Spain) plays an outstanding role in the understanding of the how and when of the early human settlement of Europe. This basin records the oldest presence of early Pleistocene hominids in Western Europe, as evidenced by the thousands of Mode 1 lithic tools from the sites of Barranco León and Fuente Nueva 3. Moreover, as a difference with the Atapuerca karstic complex, the Guadix-Baza Basin is composed of a complete sequence of fluviatile and lacustrine sediments that ranges from the latest Miocene to the late middle Pleistocene. Particularly significant is the Pliocene-Pleistocene record in the Baza sub-basin, composed of fluviatile and lacustrine sediments which have yielded dozens of large and small vertebrate fossiliferous levels, including amphibians, squamates, insectivores, rodents and lagomorphs.