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Cantabrian cornice has experienced seven cooling and warming phases over past 41,000 years
June 03, 2009In 1996, an international team of scientists led by the University of Zaragoza (UNIZAR) started to carry out a paleontological survey in the cave of El Mirón. Since then they have focused on analysing the fossil remains of the bones and teeth of small vertebrates that lived in the Cantabrian region over the past 41,000 years, at the end of the Quaternary. The richness, great diversity and good conservation status of the fossils have enabled the researchers to carry out a paleoclimatic study, which has been published recently in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
"We carried out every kind of statistical analysis over a six-month period at the University of New Mexico, analysing around 100,000 remains, of which 4,000 were specifically identified, and catalogued according to species and the number of individuals in each stratum", Gloria Cuenca-Bescós, lead author of the study and a researcher in the Paleontology Department of the UNIZAR's Institute for Scientific Research (IUCA), tells SINC.
The resulting study involves climatic inferences being drawn on the basis of the fossil associations of small mammals whose remains have been deposited in El Mirón over the past 41,000 years. The fossil associations of these mammals reveal the composition of fauna living around the cave at the time, and have made it possible to develop a paleoclimatological and paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the environment.
The research shows that there have been seven periods of cooling and warming in the Cantabrian cornice over the past 41,000 years. An analysis carried out by other authors on data relating to pollen, marine isotope stratigraphy, and materials deposited by glaciers backs this up this result.
The water rat was king of the Late Pleistocene
According to the study, there were four unstable cold periods, two more stable ones, and a temperate climatic period at the El Mirón cave. The scientists are unsure about dating the seventh and last period ended, as this "could correspond with the Bronze Age, the Ice Age, or the start of agricultural expansion by human beings, which certainly would have impacted on the wild animals living close to the caves.
However, the study shows that during earlier periods at the end of the Late Pleistocene, the species that predominated during cold periods were rodents and insectivores that were well-adapted to environments with only sparse vegetation. "When climatic conditions became more mild at the end of the last cold pulse of the Late Pleistocene, known as the Dryas III, forest-dwelling rodents and insectivores flourished and become more frequent in the associations", explains Cuenca-Bescós. We now know that the water vole (Arvicola terrestris) dominated in this period.
According to the researcher, this domination by woodland species started to decline in the area only at the end of the Holocene, when human activities began to change the landscape, and when deforestation resulting from permanent settlements and agriculture can be observed "even though the climate continued to be favourable to these kinds of organisms".
The study has also shown that the majority of the Pleistocene taxa became extinct around 10,000 years ago while "some cold-adapted species, which had managed to survive, moved to the north of Europe, leaving our warmer latitudes behind", the scientist concludes.
FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology
The research shows that there have been seven periods of cooling and warming in the Cantabrian cornice over the past 41,000 years. An analysis carried out by other authors on data relating to pollen, marine isotope stratigraphy, and materials deposited by glaciers backs this up this result.
The water rat was king of the Late Pleistocene
According to the study, there were four unstable cold periods, two more stable ones, and a temperate climatic period at the El Mirón cave. The scientists are unsure about dating the seventh and last period ended, as this "could correspond with the Bronze Age, the Ice Age, or the start of agricultural expansion by human beings, which certainly would have impacted on the wild animals living close to the caves.
However, the study shows that during earlier periods at the end of the Late Pleistocene, the species that predominated during cold periods were rodents and insectivores that were well-adapted to environments with only sparse vegetation. "When climatic conditions became more mild at the end of the last cold pulse of the Late Pleistocene, known as the Dryas III, forest-dwelling rodents and insectivores flourished and become more frequent in the associations", explains Cuenca-Bescós. We now know that the water vole (Arvicola terrestris) dominated in this period.
According to the researcher, this domination by woodland species started to decline in the area only at the end of the Holocene, when human activities began to change the landscape, and when deforestation resulting from permanent settlements and agriculture can be observed "even though the climate continued to be favourable to these kinds of organisms".
The study has also shown that the majority of the Pleistocene taxa became extinct around 10,000 years ago while "some cold-adapted species, which had managed to survive, moved to the north of Europe, leaving our warmer latitudes behind", the scientist concludes.
FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology
Pleistocene Current Events and Pleistocene News RSSTags reveal white sharks have neighborhoods in the north Pacific, say Stanford researchers
The white shark may be the ultimate loner of the ocean, cruising thousands of miles in a solitary trek, but a team of researchers has discovered that the sharks have maintained such a consistent pattern of migration that over tens of thousands of years the white sharks in the northeastern Pacific Ocean have separated themselves into a population genetically distinct from sharks elsewhere in the world.
The largest bat in Europe inhabited northeastern Spain more than 10,000 years ago
Spanish researchers have confirmed that the largest bat in Europe, Nyctalus lasiopterus, was present in north-eastern Spain during the Late Pleistocene (between 120,000 and 10,000 years ago).
2-million-year-old evidence shows tool-making hominins inhabited grassland environments
In an article published in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE on October 21, 2009, Dr Thomas Plummer of Queens College at the City University of New York, Dr Richard Potts of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History and colleagues report the oldest archeological evidence of early human activities in a grassland environment, dating to 2 million years ago.
Study finds human population expanded during late Stone Age
Genetic evidence is revealing that human populations began to expand in size in Africa during the Late Stone Age approximately 40,000 years ago.
Underwater exploration seeks evidence of early Americans
Where the first Americans came from, when they arrived and how they got here is as lively a debate as ever, only most of the research to date has focused on dry land excavations.
Oldest evidence of leprosy found in India
A biological anthropologist from Appalachian State University working with an undergraduate student from Appalachian, an evolutionary biologist from UNC Greensboro, and a team of archaeologists from Deccan College (Pune, India) recently reported analysis of a 4000-year-old skeleton from India bearing evidence of leprosy.
Climate change makes migrations longer for birds
Bird migrations are likely to get longer according to the first ever study of the potential impacts of climate change on the breeding and winter ranges of migrant birds.
13,000 Clovis-era tool cache unearthed in Colorado shows evidence of camel, horse butchering
A biochemical analysis of a rare Clovis-era stone tool cache recently unearthed in the city limits of Boulder, Colo., indicates some of the implements were used to butcher ice-age camels and horses that roamed North America until their extinction about 13,000 years ago, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder study.
Draft version of the Neanderthal genome completed
The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, Germany, and the 454 Life Sciences Corporation, in Branford, Connecticut, will announce on 12 February during the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and at a simultaneous European press briefing that they have completed a first draft version of the Neandertal genome.
Scientists Uncover a Dramatic Rise in Sea Level and Its Broad Ramifications
Scientists have found proof in Bermuda that the planet's sea level was once more than 21 meters (70 feet) higher about 400,000 years ago than it is now. Their findings were published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews Wednesday, Feb. 4.
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