Tarragona – The identification in the mountains of Prades (Tarragona, to the east of Spain) of fossil remains of Pinicola Enucleator, a missing boreal bird more than 24,000 years ago, is a direct test of the presence of Arctic species in southern latitudes and indicates that the climate in the area was much colder and more dry.
The discovery, published in the GEOBIOS magazine, has been led by the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (Iphes-Cerca), which has found these fossil remains in the COVA of the Cudó de Mont-ral, in the mountains of Prades (Tarragona).
According to the Iphes, This finding brings “a direct evidence of the presence of arctic species in southern latitudes,” and indicates that “the climate in the area was much colder and dry, with open forests and typically boreal conditions.”
The researchers focused on two cavities close to Mont-ral: the COVA of the Cudó and the COVA DELS Galls Carboners, with more than 450 remains of analyzed birds, and carried out a detailed taphonomic analysis to understand how the remains accumulated and what predators intervened.
In the COVA of the Cudó, most of the remains correspond to small birds, with 41% of bones that show digestion marks.
These data indicate that nocturnal raptors, such as owls, and daytime, such as hawks, used cavity as a place of food and rest.
For its part, the COVA DELS Galls Carboners shows a majority accumulation of pigeons, which suggests that it could have been a breeding area.
The teeth brands present in many bones indicate a high predation pressure by small carnivores, such as fox or the Iberian lynx, which took advantage of the vulnerability of the young in the nests.
According to the study, this systematic predation pattern on birds of birds by small carnivores is unusual in European deposits of the Pleistocene, and opens new paths of study on the hunting and food strategies of these animals in cave environments.
“What we have found is an exceptional natural archive that allows us to rebuild with great precision what ecosystems were during one of the coldest periods of the Pleistocene. The presence of boreal species in these latitudes demonstrates to what extent the global climate cooling transformed the habitats of southern Europe,” explains the main author of the study, Mario Marqueta.