Anthony J. Stuart

The earliest record of human activity in northern Europe

The colonization of Eurasia by early humans is a key event after their spread out of Africa, but the nature, timing and ecological context of the earliest human occupation of northwest Europe is uncertain and has been the subject of intense debate. The southern Caucasus was occupied about 1.8 million years (Myr) ago, whereas human remains from Atapuerca-TD6, Spain (more than 780 kyr ago) and Ceprano, Italy (about 800 kyr ago) show that early Homo had dispersed to the Mediterranean hinterland before the Brunhes–Matuyama magnetic polarity reversal (780 kyr ago). Until now, the earliest uncontested artefacts from northern Europe were much younger, suggesting that humans were unable to colonize northern latitudes until about 500 kyr ago. Here we report flint artefacts from the Cromer Forest-bed Formation at Pakefield (52° N), Suffolk, UK, from an interglacial sequence yielding a diverse range of plant and animal fossils. Event and lithostratigraphy, palaeomagnetism, amino acid geochronology and biostratigraphy indicate that the artefacts date to the early part of the Brunhes Chron (about 700 kyr ago) and thus represent the earliest unequivocal evidence for human presence north of the Alps.

Pleistocene to Holocene extinction dynamics in giant deer and woolly mammoth.

The extinction of the many well-known large mammals (megafauna) of the Late Pleistocene epoch has usually been attributed to ‘overkill’ by human hunters, climatic/vegetational changes or to a combination of both. An accurate knowledge of the geography and chronology of these extinctions is crucial for testing these hypotheses. Previous assumptions that the megafauna of northern Eurasia had disappeared by the Pleistocene/Holocene transition were first challenged a decade ago by the discovery that the latest woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island, northeastern Siberia, were contemporaneous with ancient Egyptian civilization. Here we show that another spectacular megafaunal species, the giant deer or ‘Irish elk’, survived to around 6,900 radiocarbon yr bp (about 7,700 yr ago) in western Siberia—more than three millennia later than its previously accepted terminal date—and therefore, that the reasons for its ultimate demise are to be sought in Holocene not Pleistocene events. Before their extinction, both giant deer and woolly mammoth underwent dramatic shifts in distribution, driven largely by climatic/vegetational changes. Their differing responses reflect major differences in ecology.

The mammalian faunas of Pakefield/Kessingland and Corton, Suffolk, UK: evidence for a new temperate episode in the British early Middle Pleistocene

Abstract It has been recognised for some time that early Middle Pleistocene mammal faunas in Britain can be divided into an earlier group with Mimomys savini (e.g. West Runton Freshwater Bed—WRFB), and a later group with Arvicola terrestris cantiana (Boxgrove, Westbury, Ostend), representing two or more temperate/interglacial stages. On the basis of the available early Middle Pleistocene non-marine molluscan faunas, Meijer and Preece (in: C. Turner (Ed.), The Early Middle Pleistocene in Europe, Balkema: Rotterdam, 1996, pp. 53–82.) and Preece (Quaternary Science Reviews 20 (2001)) recognised three biostratigraphic groups, representing at least three temperate stages. These are largely compatible with the vertebrate faunas, but new evidence presented here strongly indicates that Pakefield/Kessingland represents an additional, hitherto unrecognised temperate stage with Mimomys savini, younger than the WRFB but older than Little Oakley, Boxgrove and Westbury.New exposures and finds from the Cromer Forest-bed Formation at Pakefield, Suffolk have prompted a fresh look at the palaeontology of Pakefield/Kessingland and also Corton, which has a similar lithostratigraphic and biostratigraphic sequence. The large-mammal fauna (at least in part pollen substage II) includes Hippopotamus sp., Palaeoloxodon antiquus, and Megaloceros dawkinsi—none of which has so far been found in the WRFB—strongly suggesting that the Suffolk sites represent a distinct stage. Further, no records of ‘southern’ European plant, invertebrate or vertebrate taxa have been found in the WRFB, whereas the plants Trapa natans and Salvinia natans—indicating summers warmer than now—are known from Pakefield/Kessingland and Corton, providing corroborative evidence for a stage distinct from the Cromerian s.s.

Millennial climatic fluctuations are key to the structure of last glacial ecosystems.

Whereas fossil evidence indicates extensive treeless vegetation and diverse grazing megafauna in Europe and northern Asia during the last glacial, experiments combining vegetation models and climate models have to-date simulated widespread persistence of trees. Resolving this conflict is key to understanding both last glacial ecosystems and extinction of most of the mega-herbivores. Using a dynamic vegetation model (DVM) we explored the implications of the differing climatic conditions generated by a general circulation model (GCM) in “normal” and “hosing” experiments. Whilst the former approximate interstadial conditions, the latter, designed to mimic Heinrich Events, approximate stadial conditions. The “hosing” experiments gave simulated European vegetation much closer in composition to that inferred from fossil evidence than did the “normal” experiments. Given the short duration of interstadials, and the rate at which forest cover expanded during the late-glacial and early Holocene, our results demonstrate the importance of millennial variability in determining the character of last glacial ecosystems.

Mammoth extinction; two continents and Wrangel Island.

A harvest of 300 radiocarbon dates on extinct elephants (Proboscidea) from the northern parts of the New and Old Worlds has revealed a striking difference. While catastrophic in North America, elephant extinction was gradual in Eurasia (Stuart 1991), where straight-tusked elephants ( Palaeoloxodon antiquus ) vanished 50 millennia or more before woolly mammoths ( Mammuthus primigenius ). The range of the woolly mammoths started shrinking before 20 ka ago (Vartanyan et al. 1995). By 12 ka bp, the beasts were very scarce or absent in western Europe. Until the dating of Wrangel Island tusks and teeth (Vartanyan, Garrutt and Sher 1993), mammoths appeared to make their last stand on the Arctic coast of Siberia ca. 10 ka bp. The Wrangel Island find of dwarf mammoths by Sergy Vartanyan, V. E. Garrut and Andrei Sher (1993) stretched the extinction chronology of mammoths another 6 ka, into the time of the pharaohs.

Lugovskoe, Western Siberia: A Possible Extra-Arctic Mammoth Refugium at the End of the Late Glacial

Eleven woolly mammoth bone samples from Lugovskoe (central West Siberian Plain, Russia) were radiocarbon dated in 3 laboratories: Institute of Geology, Novosibirsk; Oxford University, Oxford; and Christian Albrechts University, Kiel. Each laboratory used its own protocol for collagen extraction. Parallel dating was carried out on 3 samples in Novosibirsk and Oxford. Two results are in good agreement. However, there is a major discrepancy between 2 dates obtained for the third sample. The dates obtained so far on the Lugovskoe mammoths range from about 18,250 BP to about 10,210 BP. The Lugovskoe results thus far confirm the possibility of woolly mammoth survival south of Arctic Siberia in the Late Glacial after about 12,000 BP, which has important implications for interpreting the process of mammoth extinction. The site has also produced the first reliable traces of human occupation from central Western Siberia at the Late Glacial, including unique direct evidence of mammoth hunting.

Occurrence of Macroneomys brachygnathus Fejfar, 1966 in the British Middle Pleistocene, with a review of the status of Beremendia fissidens [Petenyi, 1864] in Britain [Mammalia, Lipotyphla Soricidae]

Abstract. Rare isolated mandibular molars of a large soricid recovered from two British Middle Pleistocene deposits at Sugworth, near Oxford and West Runton, Norfolk were originally considered referable to Beremendia fissidens. Review of these teeth in the light of recent researches on the European mainland reveals that they pertain in fact to Macroneomys brachygnathus. Beremendia fissidens is now only known in Britain by one record from the Early Pleistocene (or Late Pliocene) Crag of Norfolk, dependent on the uncertain position of the Plio Pleistocene boundary (1.8 or 2.5 Ma). Lower molars of the two taxa are here compared in detail.

Erratum: Pleistocene to Holocene extinction dynamics in giant deer and woolly mammoth: Erratum

This corrects the article DOI: nature02890