Abstract Progress over the last 20 years in establishing reliable benchmarks in the Paleolithic of India has been uneven but major successes have been the dating of the earliest Acheulean assemblages in India; the dating of the onset of the Middle Stone Age; the dating of the earliest microlithic assemblages in India; and the dating of the antiquity of human occupation of rain forests in South India and Sri Lanka. Also important is our greater understanding of the Younger Toba Tuff and the impact of the Toba megaeruption 74 ka ago on hominin populations in India. Major uncertainties persist over when the genus Homo first entered South Asia; when our own species, H. sapiens first entered South Asia; the age of the earliest blade assemblages in India; and the antiquity of its rock art.

Abstract Compared to its type cratonal counterpart, the Sauk megasequence in the off-craton southern Great Basin is more fully developed and neatly packaged internally by regional unconformities. The Nopah Range in eastern California superbly and strategically exposes an exemplary and critical baseline Sauk section about 3000-m (∼9840-ft)-thick that provides an anchor for regional correlation. Beginning at the base of the Lower Cambrian middle member of the Wood Canyon Formation and terminating at the top of the upper Middle Or-dovician Eureka Quartzite, the Sauk megasequence can be subdivided physically into five supersequences based on sequence-stratigraphic criteria. Prominent platformwide emergence and erosion events, indicated by unconformities, and succeeding submergence and marine flooding events, recorded by overlying fine siliciclastic packages, coincide with contacts of the traditional lithostratigraphic framework. The five supersequences (Sauk-α, β, γ, δ, and ε) and their bounding unconformities reflect the major accommodation events across the platform of the southwestern Cordilleran margin and provide a chronostratigraphic framework guided by, but not dependent on, biostratigraphy. Within this framework, the Las Vegas branch of the great American carbonate bank system, which became established during a Middle Cambrian sea level highstand, rebounded impressively from platformwide interruptions by two supersequence boundary emergence and submergence events, only to meet its final fate from smothering by the voluminous Eureka quartz sand incursion.