260 The World of Elephants - International Congress, Rome 2001 1. INTRODUCTION The Terra Amata open air site is located in the city of Nice (SE of France) in the western slope of Mount Boron, at the altitude of 30 m above modern sea-level. Six months of excava- tion organised in 1966 by H. de Lumley on about 120 m 2 , have uncovered a succession of paleosurfaces with a high concentration of arte- facts attributed to acheulean culture (Lumley et al. 1976; Villa 1978, Coombs 1997), large mammals bone remains and evidence of struc- ture (fire structure, huts, etc). The stratigraphic sequence contains about 10 m of deposits. It consists in four principal units, A, B, C1 which contain each other a beach ridge (marine transgression period) covered by a dune (regression period), and on the top of the sequence, the C2 unit, which is only continen- tal. The archaeological levels belong to the C1 unit which is divided in C1a : calcareous clay and marine beach, and C1b : dune (de Lumley et al. 1976). The age of these formations is essentially based on the succession of the fossil marine beaches deposited on the Mount Boron. H. de Lumley et al. (1976) attributed the marine deposits of Terra Amata to the isotopic stage 11. In 1977, a preliminary thermolumi- nescence dating realized on two burnt flints from the beach (C1a) have given an age of 214,000 and 244,000 years respectively (Wintle & Aitken 1977). Recently, the ESR dat- ing on quartz sediment from the beach C1a indicates an age of 380,000 ± 80,000 years (Falguères et al. 1991). The mammalian fauna from C1 units con- sists in Elephas antiquus, Bos primigenius, Hemitragus bonali, Sus scrofa, Cervus ela- phus, Stephanorhinus hemitoechus, Ursus sp., Oryctolagus cuniculus (Mourer-Chauviré & Renault-Miskovsky 1980; Serre 1991; El Guennouni 2001). The size of the rhinoceros of Terra Amata and the degree of hypsodonty is close to the population of Orgnac 3 (stage 9) studied by Aouraghe (1992) (Lacombat pers. comm.). This association is relatively similar in both levels C1a and C1b. The rodents are represented by very few remains, attributed by J. Chaline to Apodemus sylvaticus, Microtus brecciensis, Arvicola cantianus, Pliomys sp. The study of amphibians and reptiles shows a large representation of Malpolon monspessu- lanus in all the levels associated to Testudo hermanni in the dune C1b; these species are characteristic of a Mediterranean climate and indicate the presence of an open Mediterranean forest (Bailon, pers. comm.). In general, this faunal assemblage corre- sponds to a warm stage of the Middle Pleistocene. These results are confirmed by the palynological analysis (Mourer-Chauviré & Renault-Miskovsky 1980). The Elephants of Terra Amata open air site (Lower Paleolithic, France) P. Valensi Laboratoire départemental de Préhistoire du Lazaret, Nice, France - valensi@lazaret.unice.fr SUMMARY: The site of Terra Amata has yielded several remains of Elephas antiquus in the different anthropic occupation levels. The preservation is not good and doesn’t allow to do a morphological study of the remains. The population of Elephas is presented in its archaeological context and the principal tapho- nomic observations are discussed.