Quaternary mammal communities at a glance

摘要

The reconstruction of past environments and their characteristics constitute a fundamental key to understand the extent to which climate variations could have affected the evolutionary history of the biosphere. During the long evolutionary history of our planet, climate changes have been a recurring phenomenon, taking place on different temporal and geographic scales: from long-term warming or cooling phases, to regular glacial-interglacial transitions, to rapid shifts in climate state that take only a few decades. The multifaceted and intriguing evolutionary history of mammals, which led to the present day biodiversity and biogeo-graphical setting, mingles with those of palaegeographic, climate and environmental changes. Accordingly, it is essential to determine the major, although multiple, factors which caused the composition and the structure of mammalian palaeocommunities to change throughout time.