Quaternary Fauna in the Levant: Ecological, Biogeographical and Biochronological Considerations for Human Evolution

Dear Colleagues,

The Levant is an essential region at the crossroad of Africa, Europe, and Asia. The extreme climatic fluctuations contributed to the complex dispersal patterns throughout and across the Levant during the quaternary. As a result of these dispersals, vertebrate community structure changed dramatically, creating non-analogue communities and exploiting new ecological niches. The dispersal of species through and within the Levant has dramatically impacted our understanding of early human demographics and human–environment interactions, e.g., Homo erectus and Homo sapiens dispersals and the Neanderthal extinction.

Understanding if early human population dynamics are related to climate change or niche exclusion and competition is critical in human evolution. Unraveling these relationships depends on understanding the biogeographic origin of other vertebrate taxa and their chronological span. Recently, several notable new archaeological sites with excellent chronological constraints have significantly increased the wealth of data that can help to illuminate the issue and significantly expand our database of synchronic and diachronic faunal assemblages across diverse ecological zones and their ecological relationship. We seek manuscripts that discuss new finds and interpretations of the biochronology and biochronology of vertebrate fauna from the Levant. We are especially interested in comprehensive and comparative reviews that span a large portion of the Levant or from regions typically underrepresented in the literature and those that employ novel analytical methods.

Dr. Miriam Belmaker
Guest Editor

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• Human evolution
• Vertebrate paleontology
• Archaeology
• Biogeography
• Biochronology
• Ecometrics
• Paleoecology