麻豆淫院

Fossils from more than 600,000 years ago reveal how Southern Europe's animal community shifted between warm and cold climate fluctuations, according to a study October 23, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Beniamino Mecozzi from the Sapienza Universit脿 di Roma, Italy and colleagues.

The Notarchirico site has long been valued as a source of information on the Early-Middle Pleistocene, with fossils stretching from around 695,000 to 614,000 years ago. The authors of the present study examined mammalian fossils at the site and how they might correlate with climate conditions over time.

The researchers note that the earliest era documented at Notarchirico corresponded with a relatively warm period, complete with fossil evidence of genera such as hippos (Hippopotamus) and rhinos (Stephanorhinus), as well as deer and macaque monkeys鈥攄emonstrating that the area likely had woods, steppes and lakes or ponds.

But by around 660,000 years ago, the macaques and hippos, both warm weather animals, had vanished. The mammal community had shifted to one dominated by the straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), and cattle-like animals such as the Pleistocene wood bison (Bison schoetensacki), with relatively few deer.

This indicates that the area was likely more open, with fewer forests, and representative of a colder climate, as this period is believed to have had some of the Pleistocene's most extensive glaciation.

Fossils from the upper levels of the deposit documented at Notarchirico include a lot of deer who ate from woody shrubs and trees, indicating that the climate had likely warmed again and the area had filled in with forests.

In addition to reflecting the changing climate of the time, the fossil evidence at Notarchirico provides more insight into how and when different species moved out of and into Europe during the Pleistocene.

Fossils recovered on site include some of the oldest known evidence in all of Europe of the straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) and the red deer (Cervus elaphus), as well as some of the oldest known evidence of the cave lion (Panthera spelaea) in southwestern Europe.

The authors add, "The results of this work highlight the importance of resuming excavation and research activities at sites that were excavated in the past, as well as revisiting old museum collections that are often forgotten.

"By integrating the review of paleontological collections gathered in the past with the study of unpublished materials from new research, it has been possible to observe how terrestrial ecosystems responded to nearly 100,000 years of climate change."