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Oral Lectures
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LOCALLY EXTINCT PLANTS FOUND AT THE 780,000 YEARS OLD
GESHER BENOT YA’AQOV, ISRAEL
Yoel MELAMED
The Mina & Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, 52900 Israel,
yomelamed@gmail.com
Seed and fruit remains of 130 taxa were identified at the Gesher Benot Ya’aqov archaeological
site. These remains were found together with many Acheulian stone tools, rich assemblage of
fossil animal bones, as well as pollen, wood and bark. The site is located south of the Hula Valley
in the Dead Sea Rift, a segment of the African Great Rift System. It stretches along 3.5 km of the
bed and both banks of the River Jordan. Excavations revealed a series of waterlogged tectonically
tilted layers that were deposited in the paleo-Lake Hula and on its shores. The wealth of
archaeological finds deposited on the shores of this lake represent the environment and behavior
of hominins that occupied this landscape. The fieldwork exposed deposits that document a series
of paleoclimatic fluctuations extending over 100,000 years and dated to the Lower and Middle
Pleistocene, some 800-700 kyr.
The seeds and fruit remains include fifteen locally-extinct-taxa, i.e. taxa that do not grow today in
the Hula Valley or in other region included in flora Palaestina. These taxa are wet-habitat plants,
namely Aldrovanda vesiculosa, Azolla filiculoides, Hippuris vulgaris, Euryale ferox, Montia
minor, Najas foveolata, Nymphoides peltata, Potamogeton coloratus/polygonifolius, P.
distinctus, Ranunculus arvensis var. inermis, Salvinia natans, Sagittaria sagittifolia, Trapa
natans, as well as Stratiotes intermedius and Tectochara cf. merianii that had become extinct.
Their significance for the hominins that occupied the ancient Hula Valley is discussed. It is
interesting that most of these regional extinct species have a wide distribution with a lacuna in the
Middle East.
Keywords: Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Hula valley, Local extinction, Pleistocene, water-plants.
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