Acta Zoologica Cracoviensia, 39(1) 1996

Issue:

VOL 39(1) 1996

Keywords:

Ubeidiya, Erq-el-Ahmar, Evron, Latamne, Gesher

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Rodent faunas, chronostratigraphy and paleobiogeography of the southern Levant during the Quaternary

• Eitan TCHERNOV

Abstract:

Due to its geographical location the southern Levantine region has been intermittently used as a land bridge between Eurasia and Africa. The kaleidoscopic admixture of Palaearctic, Palaeotropic and Saharo-Arabian elements in the Levant during the Quaternary is primarily the product of Afro-Eurasian biotic interchanges resulting from the drawing up of the northern edge of the Afro-Arabian continent against the margin of the Eurasian continental body by subduction along the present Anatolian-Iranian tectonic suture line. With the ever increasing aridity during the Quaternary, the southern Levant became sufficiently isolated to hamper gene flow with other regions, and while undergoing provincialization endemism was encouraged. Therefore, intrusion of new elements into this region should be associated with major geological and climatological fluctuations. Minor environmental changes would not have been effective enough to thrust organisms either over the northern Levantine mountain chain or across the arid zones. Apart from the known microfaunal assemblages, the geochronologies of many of the bone bearing sites and cultural sequences concerned and evidence from sea level fluctuations along the Mediterranean coast, there are at present more radiometric dates available for some of the problematic assemblages. Combining these dates with the known bio- and chronostratigraphies enable us to suggest a somewhat more complete reconstruction of the Levantine Pleistocene faunal sequence, and correlate it with the main events in Eurasia and Africa. The faunal spectra of micromammals were used to build up a sequence in which the most important bone-bearing beds are ordered according to faunal events. It also enables a better understanding of the paleoecological conditions that prevailed in this region.