Late Pleistocene Palaeoenvironmental Variations from Marine Isotope Stages 5 and 4: Small Mammals at Artazu VIII Site (Arrasate, Northern Iberian Peninsula)

Abstract

Abstract. Sites corresponding to Marine Isotope Stage MIS 5c and MIS 4 like Artazu VIII, with a continental record but no hominin imprints or carnivore activities, are very scarce in the Iberian Peninsula. The Artazu VIII cave fill (Arrasate, northern Spain) was discovered in 2013 and is presented here for the first time, including detailed stratigraphic and sedimentological descriptions of the differentiated 12 levels, as well as an ordered chronology of most levels, covering at least 36.000 years. In addition, the small mammal assemblage yielded a total of 8,129 identifiable skeletal remains corresponding to 14 taxa. The conditions inferred from the ecological preferences of the small mammal associations have been correlated with four different stages and substages from MIS 5c to MIS 4 in which the woodland mass expanded and retreated, depending on the relative temperature and humidity in each period. Finally, considering the species variability and estimated palaeoenvironment, a comparison with the NGRIP δ18O curve and other sites with the same chronology has been performed, showing that Artazu VIII is one of the few deposits attributable to the Marine Isotopic Stages previously mentioned and the only one that correlates to the Greenland Interstadial 18 from the Iberian Peninsula.