Occurrences of warm-adapted mammals in north China over the Quaternary Period and their paleo-environmental significance

Abstract

The north and south China faunas are subdivided along the line of Huaihe River-Qinling MountainsHengduan Mountains-Himalayas, to the north is the Palearctic Region, and to the south is the Oriental Region, which is the result of long-time evolution. Hundreds of Quaternary fossil localities have been known up to now, more than 60 of which contain warm-adapted elements which can be referred to 20 species. Among the warm-adapted elements appearing in north China, Hystrix, Macaca, Palaeoloxodon, Dicerorhinus and Bubalus are the most frequently recorded genera. There are three kinds of causal explanation about the frequent appearance of warm-adapted elements in north China: The first hypothesis attributed them to the dispersal events of warm-adapted mammals from the south during warm stages or warm seasons; the second scenario thinks that these warm-adapted mammals in north China were once derived there in situ and subsequently emigrated to the south with the cooling down of the global climate; the last hypothesis believes that these warm-adapted elements were not real warm-climate animals at that time. This study shows that almost none of the warm-adapted mammals in north China was recovered in the loess, and also almost all of the fossil localities which bear warm-adapted mammals fall within the warm temperate zone of nowadays. In fossil assemblage, those warm-adapted elements rarely co-exist with the cold-adapted mammals. All these evidences mentioned above indicate that the warm-adapted mammals in north China represent warm climate, but not hot one. Because all these warm-adapted mammals are widely distributed oriental elements, some of them even still exist north of the Huaihe River today. Up to now, no typical oriental elements have ever been recovered in north China, such as pangolin, primitive primates (e.g. loris and tarsier), big apes (e.g. Gigantopithecus, Pongo and Hylobates), etc. The Late Pleistocene lasted a relatively shorter time, but the appearance of warm-adapted mammals during that span were the most frequent and most widespread. It means that the climate of the Late Pleistocene experienced the most frequent fluctuation over the whole period of Quaternary. mammals, oriental elements, north China, Quaternary, paleoenvironment

Hominins without fellow travellers? First appearances and inferred dispersals of Afro-Eurasian large-mammals in the Plio-Pleistocene

“…African sites are well represented by the ETE (Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems) records and much of the European and Central Asian records are covered by the PACED dataset. However, far fewer Eastern Asian sites are included, although fortunately several recent reviews of the Asian faunas have been published (Chauhan, 2008;Deng et al, 2008;Nanda, 2002Nanda, , 2008Tong, 2006Tong, , 2007Zhu et al, 2008) and these have been incorporated where appropriate. The breakdown of localities per continent is as follows: Asia = 63, Africa = 526, Europe = 306, and the Levant = 9.…”

“…However, in Asia it was confined to the Palaearctic regions (Tong, 2007), and all Palaeoloxodon records in peninsular India now appear to be Elephas (Chauhan, 2008), the genus to which the extant Indian elephant belongs.…”

“…The fauna of peninsular India appears to have followed a different evolutionary trajectory from that of other areas (Chauhan, 2008), and it is possible that it served as a dead end for dispersals. Northern China shares many species with Europe, but there was clearly a different fauna in oriental China, although there is evidence of mixture with cooler faunas from the north (Tong, 2006(Tong, , 2007.…”

“…Hippopotamus georgicus (= H. amphibius antiquus) has been found in Central Asia, at the late Early Pleistocene site of Akhalkalaki in Georgia ), but not so far in southern and Eastern Asia, where it is possible that its niche was filled by Hexaprotodon. According to Tong (2007) Hippopotamus is not found in China, but it is conceivable that some Hippopotamus sp.…”

2 The earliest stages of hominin dispersal in Africa and Eurasia

“…It has recently been suggested that the spread of Homo erectus to China was associated with the high-latitude northern Chinese Mammuthus/ Coelodonta fauna (Ciochon 2010), rather than the subtropical Stegodon/Ailuropoda fauna. The boundary region between both of these faunas lay in central China and shifted north and south with climatic change (Tong 2007). …”