New clues about the late Early Pleistocene peopling of western Europe: Small vertebrates from The Bois-de-Riquet archeo- paleontological site (L  ezignan-La-C  ebe, southern France) I. Lozano-Fern  andez a, b, * , H.-A. Blain a, b , J. Agustí a, b, c , P. Pi ~ nero a, b , D. Barsky a, b , J. Ivorra d , L. Bourguignon e a Institut Catal a de Paleoecologia Humana i Evoluci o Social (IPHES), Tarragona, Spain b  Area de Prehist oria, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Tarragona, Spain c ICREA, Pg. Lluís Companys 23, 08010, Barcelona Spain d SPN P ezenas, 14 rue de la Foire, 34120, P ezenas, France e INRAP, AnTet/Arscan, P^ ole mixte de Recherche, Domaine de Ch^ ateau Campagne, 24260, Campagne, France article info Article history: Received 22 January 2019 Received in revised form 20 June 2019 Accepted 8 July 2019 Keywords: Late early pleistocene Biochronology Paleoenviroment Small vertebrates Acheulian First hominins in Europe abstract The different archeostratigraphic units of the Bois-de-Riquet site (L ezignan-la-C ebe, southern France) have yielded a range of stone tools in association with rich large-mammal assemblages. The oldest stone tools are from archeostratigraphic unit US2, which was initially dated to <1.57 Ma and with later, more detailed dating assigned to the interval between 1.4 and 1.1Ma. This paper presents results from all small vertebrate fossil remains recovered from US2. The faunal list now comprises the arvicolines Allophaiomys nutiensis, Mimomys savini, Stenocranius gregaloides, Iberomys huescarensis and Terricola arvalidens, the murids Apodemus sylvaticus and Castillomys rivas, the hamster Allocricetus bursae, the toad Epidalea calamita, the snake Vipera sp. and an indeterminanble lizard (Lacertidae indet.). Based on the chrono- logical ranges known to date, the arvicolinae species indicate that the age of US2 is between 1 and 0.9 Ma. This places this site among the southern European localities associated with the first arrivals of hominins in Europe, like Sierra de Atapuerca (Spain), Barranco Le on D and Fuente Nueva 3 (Spain), Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar (Spain), Barranc de la Boella (Spain), Vallaparadis (Spain), Le Vallonnet (France) and Pirro Nord (Italy). The fauna analysis allows us to reconstruct the paleoenvironment of the area surrounding the site during its formation and shows a dominance of open and humid meadow landscape, with scarce areas of humid forest, and woodland margin relatively far from the water’s edge. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction It is currently widely accepted that hominins colonized Europe during the late Early Pleistocene, between 1.4 and 0.78 Ma (Rodríguez et al., 2011; MacDonald et al., 2012; Barsky et al., 2013; Bermúdez de Castro and Martin on-Torres, 2013; Walker, 2017). This assumption is based on the discovery of Homo antecessor and Homo sp. in Sierra de Atapuerca (Carbonell et al., 1995, 2005; 2008; Bermúdez de Castro et al., 1997 , 2010; 2011; de Lombera-Hermida et al., 2015) and Barranco Le on D (Barsky et al., 2010; Toro- Moyano et al., 2010a, 2010b, 2013) in Spain. Lithic tools from this time interval have also been documented at the Spanish sites of Vallparadis (Madurell-Malapeira et al., 2010, 2012; Duval et al., 2011; Lozano-Fern andez et al., 2015), Barranc de la Boella (Lozano-Fern andez et al., 2013, 2014; Vallverdú et al., 2014), Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar (Walker et al., 2016; L opez Jim enez et al., 2018) in Spain, as well as from Pirro Nord in Italy (Arzarello et al., 2007 , 2009; Arzarello and Peretto, 2010), and Le Vallonnet in France (Lumley et al., 1988; Moull e et al., 2006; Michel et al., 2017). The Bois-de-Riquet site (BDR), in the south of France, is an important addition to this list of sites providing information about the earliest arrivals of hominins in Europe (Crochet et al., 2009; Bourguignon et al., 2016b). The site was discovered in the 1990s, * Corresponding author. Institut Catal a de Paleoecologia Humana i Evoluci o Social (IPHES), Tarragona, Spain. E-mail address: ivanlozanof@gmail.com (I. Lozano-Fern andez). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary Science Reviews journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quascirev https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.07.015 0277-3791/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Quaternary Science Reviews 219 (2019) 187e203