Discontinuities in the faunal assemblages and early human populations of Central and Western Europe during the middle and late pleistocene

Abstract

The middle and late Pleistocene history of Central and Western Europe includes several intervals of faunal change involving both local extinction and immigration of new species from elsewhere. Substantial faunal turnovers correspond to times of climate change. For many species, Central and Western Europe was a peripheral part of their geographic range and thus an area of temporal occurrence. The evolution of these taxa can be traced to core areas elsewhere. An important question concerns the extent to which human populations were similarly affected by climate change and faunal turnover. The successive groups of humans that populated Central and Western Europe did not necessarily originate in the same core area, and different areas of origin may explain morphological differences distinguishing various human fossils known from the middle Pleistocene of Germany.