%0 Journal Article
%A Cuenca Bescós, Gloria
%A Melero Rubio, M.
%A Rofes, Juan
%A Martínez Mendizábal, Ignacio
%A Arsuaga, Juan Luis
%A Blain, Hugues Alexandre
%A López García, Juan Manuel
%A Carbonell i Roura, Eudald
%A Bermúdez de Castro, José María
%T The Early-Middle Pleistocene environmental and climatic change and the humanexpansion in Western Europe: A case study with small vertebrates (Gran Dolina,Atapuerca, Spain)
%D 2011
%@ 0047-2484
%U https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/44371
%X The dispersal of hominins may have been favored by the opening of the landscape during the EarlyeMiddlePleistocene transition (EMP) in Western Europe. The structure of the small-vertebrateassemblages of the archaeo-paleontological karstic site of Gran Dolina in Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain)shows important environmental and climatic changes in the faunal succession, across the MatuyamaeBrunhesboundary at 780 ka. These changes are interpreted to indicate impoverishment of theforests, along with an increase in dry meadows, and open lands in general that entailed a tendencytowards the loss of diversity in small-vertebrate communities above the EMP. We evaluate variation indiversity of the faunal succession of Gran Dolina using Shannon’s Second Theorem as an index ofecosystem structure. The long cultural-stratigraphic sequence of Gran Dolina during the EMP is somewhatsimilar in its completeness and continuity to that in the locality of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in theUpper Jordan Valley. We also evaluate related data including faunal and floral (pollen) succession. Bothlocalities present cold, dry and humid, warm fluctuations at the transition between the Early and theMiddle Pleistocene. Comparisons between these sites present opportunities to understand large-scaleclimatic changes.
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