Reconstitution paléoenvironnementale et paléoclimatique du Pléistocène Supérieur ancien (MIS 5A) dans le centre de l’Espagne: Les petits vertébrés (Amphibia, Reptilia & Mammalia) des gisements de HAT et PRERESA (Sud-Est de Madrid)

Abstract

The archeological sites of HAT and PRERESA are located in the valleys of the rivers Jarama and Manzanares respectively, at nearly 6 km one from the other, and 18 km southeast of Madrid. They correspond to floodplain deposits that preserved the remains of the punctual activities of Neanderthal groups in particular the cutting up of large mammals (in particular Proboscidea in PRERESA) approximately 80.000 years ago. The small vertebrate assemblages recovered during the excavation campaigns made in 2001 in HAT and from 2003 to 2005 in Preresa are constituted by amphibians (Pelobates cultripes, Pelodytes sp., Bufo bufo, Bufo calamita, Hyla sp. and Pelophylax perezi), reptiles (Testudinoidea indet., Blanus sp., Timon lepidus, Psammodromus cf. algirus, Natrix maura, Coronella sp. and Vipera latastei) and small mammals (Erinaceus europaeus, Crocidura russula, Rhinolophus ferrumequinum, Eliomys quercinus quercinus, Apodemus sp., Cricetulus (Allocricetus) bursae, Arvicola aff. sapidus, Microtus cabrerae, Microtus duodecimcostatus and Oryctolagus cuniculus). These two assemblages, with an age more or less similar, reveal at the end of the last interglacial (MIS 5a) in Central Spain a climate of Mediterranean type (four months of aridity during summer and the beginning of fall) identical, or warmer than current one with more abundant rainfalls during winter and spring, and a lesser continentality, linked with a certain increase of winter temperatures. Such climatic conditions seem to have been favorable to the existence of humid woodland areas, at least near the rivers, and of steppe areas or dry meadows with bushes on the surrounding plateaus.