A new Late Pleistocene fauna from arid coastal India: Implications for inundated coastal refugia and human dispersals

A diverse Late Pleistocene fossil assemblage was recovered from a sea cliff locality near Gopnath in Gujarat, northwestern India. These remains are the first large sample of Pleistocene faunal materials from arid northwestern India. Several taxa known primarily from coarse alluvial deposits of central India are documented for the first time from an undisturbed open-air site adjoining the Great Indian Desert. The sample includes a new species of antelope from a lineage considered extinct outside of Africa since the Early Pleistocene. The paleoenvironmental context, faunal composition and type of fossil preservation reported here is unique. The Gopnath fauna accumulated in a pond within a carbonate dune field that formed part of a larger coastal oasis ecosystem. This paleoscape occupied the Cambay Gulf during hyper-arid glacial low stands. The Gopnath fossils are correlated to Late Acheulean lithics from a coastal cliff locality (<8 km) at Madhuban. These finds provide the first vertebrate evidence of glacial low stands and their influence on Late Pleistocene paleobiogeography within the dynamic dry coastal corridor linking India to Africa. They offer a rare glimpse of a lost landscape and an obscure fossil community that are critical to understanding the paleobiogeography of the hinterland along the Arabian seashore and informing models of early human dispersals.