Rodent Faunas and Environmental Changes in the Pleistocene of Israel

Abstract

It is now generally believed that progressive desiccation has been the principal climatic trend during the late Pleistocene of Israel. This gradual shift in the climate towards a drier regime has presumably been the cause of the local extinction of the more tropical components of the Eastern Mediterranean fauna. The impact of the European glacial sequence on the one hand and of the close proximity of a great desert on the other on the evolution of the climate of Israel, and on the rodent fauna of the land through the ages, is yet to be understood in depth. An attempt has been made in the following pages to collate all the available information on the environmental changes in relation to rodent faunas in the Pleistocene of Israel.