Prehistoric reef-building coral occurrence in north Peru

Abstract

Discovery of a late Pleistocene (∼13,300 cal BP) reef-building coral species (Pocillopora damicornis) at the prehistoric Huaca Prieta settlement in Peru raises the question of its origin. Did it arrive in northern Peru from tropical Ecuador via larval dispersal in south-flowing El Niño currents or over land by human trading? The Holocene distribution of Pocillopora in the eastern Pacific extends as far south as southern Ecuador and possibly northern Peru. The marine climate during the late Pleistocene was cooler and likely limited the occurrence of corals at today’s latitudinal range. This suggests that overland or onshore transport was the most likely means of a southerly introduction, thus supporting interpretative models of early human movement along the Pacific coast of South America.

Keywords:

• Late Pleistocene
• Huaca Prieta
• Pocillopora coral
• El Niño

Acknowledgements

We thank A. López-Pérez for information on fossil coral occurrences and J. A. Quintela Fernandez for creating a locator map. Alonso Eduardo Sanchez and Victor Vásquez kindly secured and provided a modern-day coral specimen for comparative study. Thanks are due to Leslie Harris and Kirk Fitzhugh for identifying the polychaete worm producing the calcareous marine stone at Chicama. Amy Clement, Jorge Cortés, Daniel O. Suman, and Lauren Toth offered helpful insight and perspective on this study. We are grateful to the Ministerio de Cultura in Lima, Peru for granting permission to carry out research at the Huaca Prieta site.

Data sharing

The data that support the findings of our study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. This manuscript has not been published elsewhere nor has it been submitted simultaneously for publication elsewhere.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, and Vanderbilt University funded the research at Huaca Prieta, NSF grants BS98-2008 and BS-111-2010; NGS 291-09.