Were Neandertalians essentially carnivores? Sr and Ba preliminary results of the mammalian palaeobiocoenosis of Saint-Cesaire.

Strontium-calcium (Sr/Ca) and barium-calcium (Ba/Ca) ratios are reduced constantly between diet and bioapatite in mammal organisms. This phenomenon leads to a reduction in the Sr/Ca and Ba/Ca ratios at higher trophic level in predator-prey mammalian communities, and is applied here to the reconstruction of a castelperronian food web, which includes a Neanderthal specimen. Adapted chemical pretreatment allows to isolate bioapatite from diagenetic compounds for analysis of Ca, Sr and Ba, Sr/Ca and Ba/Ca results of the fauna are consistent with trophic predictions. Initial results for the Neandertal suggest that he was mostly carnivorous. Distribution of Ba/Ca values of bones of herbivorous taxa reveals that ruminant animals can be distinguished from non-ruminants. The biosegregation model predicts that the diet of the Neandertal was composed by about 97 % in weight of meat with a weak contribution of vegetable or fish, and that the association of fish and plant is excluded in any proportion. (C) 2001 Academie des sciences / Editions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS.