Environmental contexts during the Iberian Neanderthal Extinction: Insight from the ecology of ungulate preys - EnvINExt

The Middle-Upper Paleolithic (MP-UP) transition is a key period for human evolution, as it corresponds to late Neanderthal’s disappearance and their replacement by Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH), after both species briefly co-occurred. This multifactorial event happened at different spatial and temporal scales across Europe. Climate constitutes a strong driver of species evolution. For Neanderthal, there is no consensus regarding the impact of climate on its disappearance, although it happened during the Marine Isotopic Stage 3, characterized by abrupt and rapid climatic oscillations. In order to track climate changes at the time of the Neanderthal’ demise and the evolutionary success of AMH, ecological proxies filling the gap between local environmental conditions and global climate changes are mandatory. Herbivore teeth are robust traps for physiological, ecological and climatic information and thus mirror past environments. EnvINExt implements three complementary ecological proxies on ungulates preyed by both human species from 10 archeological sites covering the MP-UP transition in North Iberia. Combined Dental Microwear Texture, Enamel Carbon and Oxygen stable Isotope and Molar Mesowear Analyses provide ecological information at three temporal scales, for a global overview of the paleoecology and paleoenvironment of preys and humans. EnvINExt has four objectives: (i) Exploring the ecology of ungulates, key preys for human populations, before, during and after the MP-UP transition, (ii) drawing paleoenvironmental inferences at the scale of the territories exploited by Neanderthals and AMH, (iii) thus, linking global climate changes with local environmental changes and asynchronous disappearances of Neanderthals through north Iberia during the MP-UP transition. Finally, (iv) to confront these results for northern Iberia, a refuge area, with what is obtained in southwestern France (Berlioz’s current postdoctoral work).