Case Studies from Europe

 ‘Impact of climatic changes in the Late Pleistocene on migrations and extinctions of mammals in Europe: four case studies’

(Baca et al., 2016)

This is just a quick summary of a very recent paper I thought was quite cool, as it covers both of the topics in this blog: extinction and migration of species. I found this particularly helpful as it discusses some of the species we have covered so far in this blog series, and others which we have not. These are:

Cave bear

Saiga antelope

Woolly mammoth

Collared lemming

The best way of envisioning the information in this article is by looking at the graph below. This shows radiocarbon dates, which have been converted into calendar dates (= years before present). This offers a really nice visualization of regional extinction and turnover events in Europe during the late-Quaternary. The authors conclude that the study of these four species offers a great perspective of the complexity of Quaternary faunal communities. Range shifts, regional extinction, and recolonisation events were common, and are normal phenomena in these species, rather than rare events.

Figure. 1: Species disappearance and turnover from radiocarbon (¹⁴C) dating over a 50,000y period mammoth top (2 clades), mammoth, cave bear, saiga antelope and collared lemming. Colours are indicative of different populations of the species.

(Baca et al., 2016 p. 18)

If this interests you feel free to read the paper: HERE

Another post coming soon!