Research Projects

Small vertebrate population dynamics and major climatic events in Europe during the early Late Pleistocene (MIS 5 to MIS 4)

Supervisors: Dr Claudio Berto and Dr Mateusz Baca

Host Institution: Uniwersytet Warszawski, Faculty of Archaeology (Poland)

Phd enrolment: Uniwersytet Warszawski, Interdisciplinary Doctoral School (Poland)

Objectives:

  1. To investigate the major small vertebrate changes and stasis in fossil assemblages from MIS 5 and 4 in Europe.
  2. To apply climate and environment reconstruction models to the fossil assemblages to link small vertebrates population changes to the major climate oscillation of MIS 5 tp MIS 3.
  3. To assess the homogeneity of the selected small vertebrate assemblages and to link developed climate models to a solid chronological framework on radiometric dates and molecular age estimations based on aDNA datasets of various rodent species.
  4. To verify spatial and diachronic homogeneities and differences between macrobioregions (i.e. the Mediterranean and the Central European ones or Central and Western Europe).

Expected results:

  1. New and verified data that will give new insights on the main climatic oscillations related to the main early Late Pleistocene paleontological and archaeological sequences in Europe.
  2. A better dataset on small vertebrate communities context for MIS 5 and MIS 4 sequences, as well as a better knowledge of climate and environment changes related to this time span.
  3. Identification of the main drivers and turning points of small mammal population dynamics during MIS5 and MIS4.

Planned secondment(s):

Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto will provide to the DC with additional insights into biogeography, complementing this study. Dr. Sillero will act as co-supervisor during a secondment spanning from 2 to 6 months. The secondment period will begin after the third month of the second year of the DC contract. The dates will be subject to changes based on the progress of the IRP.