Field and laboratory analyses of soils on 11 well-dated fluvisil terraces spanning the past 0.5 m.y. demonstrate that a threshold governs changes in several morphological and chemical characteristics of increasingly older soils. Correlations with respect to time among iron species, soil morphology, and soil silt and clay demonstrate that the chronosequence at Cajon Pass reflects primarily an ev...

We have coupled a climate model (ECBilt-CLIO-VECODE) and a hydrological model (STREAM) offline to simulate the palaeodischarge of 19 rivers (Amazon, Congo, Danube, Ganges, Krishna, Lena, Mackenzie, Mekong, Meuse, Mississippi, Murray-Darling, Nile, Oder, Rhine, Sacramento-San Joaquin, Syr Darya, Volga, Volta, Zambezi) for three time-slices: Early Holocene (9000-8650 BP), Mid Holocene (6200-5850 ...

Hunter-gatherers living in Europe during the transition from the late Pleistocene to the Holocene intensified food acquisition by broadening the range of resources exploited to include marine taxa. However, little is known on the nature of this dietary change in the Mediterranean Basin. A key area to investigate this issue is the archipelago of the Ègadi Islands, most of which were connected to...

The loess stratigraphic boundary at the Pleistocene/Holocene transition defined by the magnetic susceptibility (MS) has previously been assumed to be synchronous with the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 2/1 boundary, and approximately time-synchronous at different sections across the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP). However, although this assumption has been used as a basis for proxy-age model of Chines...

On the basis of a multi-proxy approach and a strategy combining lacustrine and marine records along a north– south transect, data collected in the central Mediterranean within the framework of a collaborative project have led to reconstruction of high-resolution and well-dated palaeohydrological records and to assessment of their spatial and temporal coherency. Contrasting patterns of palaeohyd...

Wood mice of the genus Apodemus are an essential component of small mammal communities throughout Europe. Molecular data suggest the postglacial colonization of current ranges from south European glacial refugia, different in particular species. Yet, details on the course of colonization and Holocene history of particular species are not available, partly because of a lack of reliable criteria ...

The availability of water shapes life in the western United States, and much of the water in the region originates in the Rocky Mountains. Few studies, however, have explicitly examined the history of water levels in the Rocky Mountains during the Holocene. Here, we examine the past levels of three lakes near the Continental Divide in Montana and Colorado to reconstruct Holocene moisture trends...

[1] We examine the response of summer precipitation to mid-Holocene insolation forcing and insolation-induced changes in sea surface temperature. Using a high-resolution nested climate modeling system, we find that mid-Holocene insolation forcing results in drier-than-present conditions over the central continental United States (U.S.) and northern Rocky Mountains, as well as wetter-than-presen...

The aims of this paper are to review previously published palaeovegetation and independent palaeoclimatic datasets together with new results we present from dynamic vegetation model simulations and modern pollen rain studies to: (i) determine the responses of Amazonian ecosystems to changes in temperature, precipitation and atmospheric CO2 concentrations that occurred since the last glacial max...

Vegetation changes of tropical Lizard Island (Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, Australia) over the last 8000 years are derived from palaeoenvironmental analysis of a 475 cm long sediment core. During early-Holocene sea-level rise, flooding of the continental shelf and thus isolation of Lizard Island, the pollen record shows the gradual establishment of a mangrove forest paralleled by con...