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The dispersal of hominins may have been favored by the opening of the landscape during the Early-Middle Pleistocene transition (EMP) in Western Europe. The structure of the small-vertebrate assemblages of the archaeo-paleontological karstic site of Gran Dolina in Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain) shows important environmental and climatic changes in the faunal succession, across the Matuyama-Brunhes boundary at 780 ka. These changes are interpreted to indicate impoverishment of the forests, along with an increase in dry meadows, and open lands in general that entailed a tendency towards the loss of diversity in small-vertebrate communities above the EMP. We evaluate variation in diversity of the faunal succession of Gran Dolina using Shannon's Second Theorem as an index of ecosystem structure. The long cultural-stratigraphic sequence of Gran Dolina during the EMP is somewhat similar in its completeness and continuity to that in the locality of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in the Upper Jordan Valley. We also evaluate related data including faunal and floral (pollen) succession. Both localities present cold, dry and humid, warm fluctuations at the transition between the Early and the Middle Pleistocene. Comparisons between these sites present opportunities to understand large-scale climatic changes., (Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

A small collection of rodents from Sima de los Huesos helps to clarify the stratigraphic position of this famous human locality. The presence of Allocricetus bursae and Pliomys lenki relictus and the size of A. bursae, Apodemus sylvaticus and Eliomys quercinus suggest a Middle Pleistocene age (Saalian) to the Clays where humans have been found.

The El Mirón Cave site in Spain has one of the most complete archaeological and palaeontological records of the Late Pleistocene in the Iberian Peninsula, encompassing most of the last c. 50,000 years. Among other studies, the fossiliferous record has allowed the development of various interpretations of faunal and climatic changes during this period of time in the northern Atlantic region of the Iberian Peninsula. The addition of more radiocarbon dates from El Mirón Cave make it possible to revise some of the interpretations of the micromammal sequence carried out earlier for this major site. The record of small mammals is one of the most used tools to study the climate of the past, and among them the several Arvicolinae species are of great importance for the study of Quaternary climatic variations, due to their adaptations to a great diversity of habitats. New methodologies such as ancient DNA and geometric morphometric analyses now permit us to conduct a review of the Arvicolinae species previously described at this site and better to differentiate between species with similar morphologies, like Microtus arvalis and M. agrestis. We also identified the presence of a species not recorded before in El Mirón, Terricola pyrenaicus. With the study of the Arvicolinae species associations, we reaffirm the climate variations originally described in this deposit, indicating in detail how the successive changes in temperature and environment took place throughout the course of the late Last Glacial and early Postglacial periods (Marine Isotope Stages 3–1). • Review of the Arvicolinae association in the El Mirón Cave. • Using geometric morphometry to differentiate morphologically similar species. • Using ancient DNA analysis to identify a new specie in this site. • Climatic variations during the Late Pleistocene in the northern Iberian Peninsula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]