Archaeology Research Seminar 'Move, adapt or die: the vertebrate fauna of te last ice age in the South-West

Title: Move, adapt or die: the vertebrate fauna of the last ice age in the South-West.

Abstract: The period 60-14.5ka BP was characterised by some of the most extreme and rapid turnover events in the vertebrate (notably mammalian) fauna of NW Europe. Britain’s position, on the margins of the North Atlantic, enhanced the impacts of repeated and abrupt climatic and environmental change on local faunal communities. These forced shifts in biogeographical distribution, leading to the aggregation and disaggregation of different faunal communities and ultimately (for some species), local or complete extinction.  This lecture will present evidence for faunal turnover from the Late Pleistocene, drawn from recent and ongoing work in cave sites in the Mendip Hills of Somerset and Devon. The evidence from these sites forms the environmental backdrop to a critical period in the early human occupation of Britain, namely the return of Neanderthals during the last cold stage, their replacement by modern humans and recolonisation after the last glacial maximum.  

Bio: Professor Danielle Schreve holds the Heather Corrie Chair in Environmental Change in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on Ice Age mammals and encompasses many different aspects including evolution, extinction, palaeoecology and mammalian responses to climate change. Increasingly, her research is contributing to the field of conservation palaeobiology - using evidence from the past to underpin conservation decisions today - and laying the foundations for nature recovery and species reintroductions in Britain.