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February 21, 2007
Climate Change and the Demise of the Neanderthals
afarensis beat me to this one. Below is the abstract of a Quaternary Science Reviews paper by Francisco J. Jiménez-Espejo, Francisca Martínez-Ruiz, Clive Finlayson, Adina Paytan, Tatsuhiko Sakamoto, Miguel Ortega-Huertas, Geraldine Finlayson, Koichi Iijima, David Gallego-Torres and Darren Fa (I hope I didn't miss anyone) called "Climate forcing and Neanderthal extinction in Southern Iberia: insights from a multiproxy marine record."
Paleoclimate records from the western Mediterranean have been used to further understand the role of climatic changes in the replacement of archaic human populations inhabiting South Iberia. Marine sediments from the Balearic basin (ODP Site 975) was analysed at high resolution to obtain both geochemical and mineralogical data. These data were compared with climate records from nearby areas. Baexcces was used to characterize marine productivity and then related to climatic variability. Since variations in productivity were the consequence of climatic oscillations, climate/productivity events have been established. Sedimentary regime, primary marine productivity and oxygen conditions at the time of population replacement were reconstructed by means of a multiproxy approach. Climatic/oceanographic variations correlate well with Homo spatial and occupational patterns in Southern Iberia. It was found that low ventilation (U/Th), high river supply (Mg/Al), low aridity (Zr/Al) and low values of Baexcess coefficient of variation, may be linked with Neanderthal hospitable conditions. We attempt to support recent findings which claim that Neanderthals populations continued to inhabit southern Iberia between 30 and 28 ky cal BP and that this persistence was due to the specific characteristics of South Iberian climatic refugia. Comparisons of our data with other marine and continental records appear to indicate that conditions in South Iberia were highly inhospitable at 24 ky cal BP. Thus, it is proposed that the final disappearance of Neanderthals in this region could be linked with these extreme conditions.
If you want to read the whole paper, it will cost you $30.00 at the Science Direct website unless you have a subscription to the journal.
As afarensis points out, this is a new theory of how Neanderthals at Gorham's Cave on Gibraltar died off. Most paleoanthropologists think that the fossils found in the cave represent the last or nearly the last surviving Neanderthals. Give afarensis' post a read. Using a BBC account, he makes some very important points. I want to repeat one point that he makes. The paper does not claim that the Neanderthals died as a direct result of the changing climate. Rather, their food supply died off as the result of a drought that was itself the result of the colder temperatures.
Posted by Duane Smith at February 21, 2007 8:38 AM | Read more on Paleoanthropology |
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