December 7 2022 – 10h30: international seminar Palevoprim n° 37
Speaker
Joan Madurell Malapeira
Associate professorship, Paleobiologist, Geology Departemnt of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Topic
When sabertoothed cats were extirpated from Europe, an history on carnivorans, hominins and climatic changes
The intensification of the glacial dynamics in the Northern Hemisphere since the latest Pliocene decisively influenced certain changes in European ecosystems. The progressive change from wooded areas with tropical affinities to mixed forests, forested-steppes and savanna-like environments enabled the dispersion of large pursuit predators into Europe since the Late Pliocene such as Homotherium, Canis or Xenocyon who flourished into these ecosystems for one million years.
However, the obliquity forced 41Ka glacial low-amplitude rhythm characteristic of the Early Pleistocene started to change around 1.2 Ma with a progressive increase in the amplitude of climatic oscillations and the establishment of strong asymmetry in global ice volume cycles. This latter climatic transition is known as ‘Early-Middle Pleistocene Transition (EMPT)’. Coeval with the former climatic transition and probably because of the environmental changes associated to it most of the Early Pleistocene long-lived carnivorans start to vanish European ecosystems and being replaced by African carnivorans and hominins carrying with them Acheulian tools around 1.0Ma.
Joan Madurell-Malapeira is a vertebrate paleobiologist specialist in the paleoecology, biogeography and neuroanatomy of Quaternary carnivorans from Eurasia and Africa. Currently holding an associate professorship position in the Geology Department of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona where he developed most of his career, and a visiting professorship at the Firenze University (Italy).
His research is focused on one side on the consequences of the Plio-Pleistocene climatic shifts in large mammal assemblages and specially in carnivorans. On the other side, he also studies the paleobiology of large carnivoran species in archeological contexts related with the first representatives of the genus Homo in the Early Pleistocene of Eurasia and Africa.
Place
Room 410, build. B35 (3rd floor, northern wing), university of Poitiers.