Bienvenido Martínez-Navarro

Bienvenido Martínez-Navarro

Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social

Humanities

Degree in Geology (1987) and PhD in Paleontology (1991). I work on Quaternary mammals, and participate at different Plio-Pleistocene projects around the World, been the co-leader of the Baza and Incarcal projects in Spain, the Oued Sarrat project in Tunisia, and the Engel Ela-Ramud project in Eritrea. I also participate in the study of the sites of Buia in Eritrea, Melka Wakena in Ethiopia, and Dmanisi in Georgia, and have worked in the past studying the sites of the Atbara River in Sudan, `Ubeidiya, Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, and Bizat Ruhama in Israel, Argentario and Pirro Nord in Italy, and Vallonnet in France.


Research interests

I am a paleontologist working on Quaternary mammals from Europe, Asia and Africa. My main interest is to describe the ecological scenario where our ancestors, the earlier members of the genus Homo, evolving and dispersing from Africa, were able to colonize the middle latitudes of Eurasia, and survive in seasonal climates during the Pleistocene times. I have developed an intense research travelling around the world to study the African origin mammals dispersing into Eurasia, and the Eurasian origin mammals dispersing into Africa, in order to describe their systematics, phylogeny, biochronology, paleobiogeography, autoecology, and their potential ecological relationships among them and with hominins. I work on fossil hyenas, sabertoothed tigers, hunting dogs, bears, elephants and mastodonts, hippos, pigs, buffaloes, antelopes, deers, giraffes, camels, monkeys and other groups.

Selected publications

– Cappellini E, Welker F, Pandolfi L, Ramos-Madrigal J, Samodova D et al. (48 authors) 2019, ‘Early Pleistocene enamel proteome from Dmanisi resolves Stephanorhinus phylogeny‘, Nature 574, pages103–107.

– Espigares MP, Palmqvist P, Guerra-Merchán A, Ros-Montoya S, García-Aguilar JM, Rodríguez-Gómez G, Serrano FJ, Martínez-Navarro B 2019, ‘The earliest cut marks of Europe: a discussion on hominin subsistence patterns in the Orce sites (Baza basin, SE Spain)’. Scientific Reports, 9, 15408.

– Medin T, Medin T, Martínez-Navarro B, Madurell-Malapeira J, Figueirido B, Kopaliani G, Rivals F, Kiladze G, Palmqvist P & Lordkipanidze D 2019. ‘The bears from Dmanisi and the first dispersal of early Homo out of Africa‘. Scientific Reports 9:17752.

– Martínez-Navarro B, Palmqvist P, Espigares MP & Ros-Montoya S (Eds) (2019). Libro de Resúmenes de las XXXV Jornadas de Paleontología, Soc. Esp. Paleonto., Baza 2-5 Octubre de 2019.  ISBN: 978-84-09-14609-3. Dep. Leg.: GR-1191-2019. 380 p.

Selected research activities

During year 2019 I have conducted field research at the Engel Ela-Ramud basin (Eritrea), the Oued Sarrat basin (Tunisia), and at the Spanish sites of Baza 1 (Baza-Guadix basin, Andalusia) and Incarcal (Banyles-Besalú basin, Catalonia).

I have done lab work too at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, studying the Early Pleistocene faunal collection from the site of Melka Wakena; the Faculty of Sciences of Bizerte in Tunisia, studying the Middle Pleistocene fauna from the site of Oued Sarrat; the National Museum of Georgia in Tbilisi, studying the fossil collecion from the Early Pleistocene site of Dmanisi; and at the Archaeological Museum of Baza (Granada, Spain), studying the Pliocene fossil collection of Baza 1.

I have been Chairman of the XXXV Jornadas de Paleontología organizing committee (the Spanish Annual Congress of Paleontology), held in Baza (Granada) on 2nd-5th October.