6533b7dafe1ef96bd126d934

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Pleistocene paleoenvironmental reconstructions and mammalian evolution in South-East Asia: focus on fossil faunas from Thailand.

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16 pages; International audience; Mammalian faunal studies have provided various clues for a better reconstruction of hominid Quaternary paleoenvironments. Inthis work, two methods were used: (1) the cenogram method, based on a graphical representation of the mammalian communitystructure, and (2) the species richness of murine rodents to estimate climatic parameters. These methods were applied to Middle andLate Pleistocene mammalian faunas of South-East Asia, from South China to Indonesia. Special emphasis was laid on a fauna fromnorth-east Thailand dated back to approximately 170,000 years (i.e. a glacial period). This Thai fauna seems characteristic of aslightly open forested environment intermediate between those of present-day central Myanmar and the northern part of SouthChina. In the Thai fauna, the occurrence of both cool-loving mammalian taxa, currently living further north, and species of largerbody size than their living counterparts, indicates cooler and probably drier climatic conditions than present-day climates inThailand. These results are quite consistent with Middle Pleistocene palynological records from South China and eastern Java.From other less well-documented Pleistocene faunas, taken into account in this work, humid climatic conditions of interglacialperiods were revealed from large mammalian taxa.