Ungulates from Teixoneres cave (Moià, Barcelona, Spain): presence of cold-adapted elements in NE Iberia during the MIS 3

Abstract

The site of Teixoneres Cave (Barcelona, NE Spain) provided two ungulate associations of MIS 3 age, one of which (from unit III) include two cold-adapted species, Coelodonta antiquitatis (Blumenbach, 1799) and Mammuthus primigenius (Blumenbach, 1799), which are infrequent in the Iberian fossil record. The collection includes the first Iberian find of a M. primigenius dP2, a rare dental element. This assemblage is relevant from chronological, biogeographical and palaeoecological aspects.

Age of this faunal association (44,210 to 33,060 cal ka BP) is slightly older than most of the other Late Pleistocene Iberian occurrences of M. primigenius and C. antiquitatis, providing interesting information on the spatiotemporal distribution of these species.

The presence of these two cold-adapted species in NE Iberia is of special biogeographical relevance since they are infrequent and poorly known in this region.

The faunal association of unit III was compared with other Iberian and Western European fossil assemblages that included C. antiquitatis and/or M. primigenius, by means of multivariate statistical analysis. The Teixoneres unit III assemblage reflects a faunal mixture in which temperate ungulate species are predominant and cold-adapted taxa are very scarce. This pattern is the same that can be observed in most of the Iberian analyzed assemblages and does not reflect the typical faunal composition of the Eurasian mammoth steppe, suggesting that that cold-adapted taxa only reached the Peninsula occasionally, during the coldest episodes of the Pleistocene, cohabiting with the local faunas instead of replacing them.