摘要：The Sierra de Atapuerca sites in Burgos, Spain (Fig.1), are well known since they have provided the first palaeontological and archaeological record of early Pleistocene Europeans in Western Europe. These human fossil remains are well documented in the so called “Trinchera” localities, a cluster of ancient caves filled-up with cave sediments dissected and uncovered by an ancient railway trench constructed by the end of the XIX century. Amid the Trinchera localities with the fossils of the first Europeans, the Gran Dolina and the Sima del Elefante sites, we will provide a biostratigraphic sketch of the Sima del Elefante site. The locality yielded the first fossils of a Homo species at the level TE9 in 2007[1]. The site is a cave opening of the Galería Baja (Fig. 1) infill with 25 m of cave sediments ordered in at least 21 stratigraphic levels. The lower levels, known as the Sima del Elefante Lower Red Unit, comprise levels TE 7 to TE14. The small mammal assemblages of the levels TE 7 and TE 14 are characterized by the red-toothed shrews Assoriculus giberodon and Beremendia fissidens, the white-toothed shrew Crocidura kornfeldi, the talpids Galemys cf. kormosi and Talpa cf. uropaea, the erinaceid Erinaceus cf. praeglacialis; the rodents Allophaiomys lavocati, A. burgondiae, A. nutiensis, Arvicola jacobaeus, Ungaromys nanus, Pliomys cf. P. simplicior, Castillomys rivas, and Apodemus aff. sylvaticus. This faunal assemblage correlates levels TE 7 to TE 14with other South-European localities, pre-Jaramillo in age, like Bagur 2, Fuentenueva 3, Barranco León, Les Valerots, Le Vallonnet, Pietrafitta, or Monte Peglia[2-6].
