Project description
Tracing the hidden history of Ice Age carnivores
What was it like to live in the Ice Age and how did humans adapt to the harsh, freezing climates? Caves, which provided shelter and feeding grounds for humans and large carnivores, can give a clear picture of life during those cold times. The ERC-funded SHADOWS project aims to analyse cave sediments in the Iberian Peninsula. It will investigate the bones and molecular traces such as ancient DNA and proteins. Researchers will work to detect species that may have survived longer than the fossil record suggests. It will explore how carnivores and humans coexisted during periods of climatic change. The findings will be useful for the conservation of threatened species today.
Objective
Caves played a vital role for Pleistocene human and carnivore populations, serving as shelters, scavenging sites, and feeding grounds. They remain the primary context preserving archeological and faunal remains in Europe. Carnivores competed with Pleistocene humans for resources and significantly contributed to cave bone accumulations and modification. Notably, evidence of carnivore behaviors largely derives from anthropogenic contexts, studied through an anthropo-centric lens. However, carnivore remains are often invisible in the archeological register, making it difficult to study them and draw precise conclusions about the level of interaction with humans and their extinction dates. Here, I hypothesize that many species of Pleistocene carnivores are present in Europe for much longer than what the fossil record indicates, that their presence can be assessed by revising the sediments and bones of archeological sites, and that the lasting populations show signs of genetic collapse linked to population contraction. Therefore, I propose to study Pleistocene carnivores in Europe, focusing on Iberia, during and after the Late Glacial Maximum, a period marked by human population decline and climatic refugia. The rich and complex archeological setting in the region will be used to identify, date, and delineate lasting carnivore populations. This information will improve the understanding of human-carnivore interactions. To do this, I have designed an innovative approach, uniting cutting-edge methods like high spatiotemporal precision sampling for sediment DNA and paleoproteomics, which combined with traditional zooarchaeological techniques overcomes the limitations of fossil availability. The research has the potential to: a) Improve the understanding and nature of the cooccurrence between Pleistocene humans and carnivores, and b) characterize the biological process of extinction helping us improve the conservation of current critically endangered fauna.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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(opens in new window) ERC-2024-STG
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1010 Wien
Austria
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