Pleistocene and holocene palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the carpathian basin based on multiproxy analysis of cervid teeth

ABSTRACT

During the Pleistocene and Holocene, large-scale climatic changes occurred, resulting in severe environmental changes. Such changes in the Carpathian Basin were examined using dental elements of cervids from localities of Slovakia and Hungary. Their dental wear and the stable carbon and oxygen isotope values of structural carbonate and phosphate in bio-apatite of enamel were measured. Dental wear reflects the long and short-term changes of past vegetation, and stable isotope analyses can be used to uncover palaeotemperature and photosynthetic pathways of the consumed plants, thus indirectly providing information on the vegetation. The changes of mesowear scores, from the early Pleistocene onwards, indicate a gradual transition from a more or less closed to an open environment, as climate got cooler. The results of microwear analysis suggest that even though the environment became more open, some tree cover remained in the Carpathian Basin, even in the glacial periods. Based on the measured δ¹⁸O values for glacial periods, estimated temperatures were approximately 5–6°C cooler, whereas for interglacials, temperatures were similar to the recent climate of Hungary. The δ¹³C values of the examined cervids suggest predominantly C₃ plant consumption, which agrees with the fact that C₄ plants are scarcer in colder environments.

KEYWORDS:

• Dental mesowear
• dental microwear
• stable isotope analyses
• palaeovegetation
• ungulate diet

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Mihály Gasparik from the Vertebrate Paleontological Collection of the Hungarian Natural History Museum (Budapest), Gábor Csorba and Tamás Görföl from the Mammalia Collection of the Hungarian Natural History Museum (Budapest), László Makádi from the Mining and Geological Survey of Hungary (Budapest) and Annamária Bárány from the Archaeozoological Collection of the Hungarian National Museum (Budapest) for their help in gathering and letting us access to the examined materials and the comparative material necessary for the preparation of this paper. The staff of the Department of Paleontology at the Eötvös Loránd University is also acknowledged for the help and infrastructure they provided. Furthermore, we would like to thank the reviewers for their useful and constructive comments and corrections of the manuscript. The research was supported by the European Union and Hungary, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund through the GINOP-2.3.2-15-2016-00009 ‘ICER’ project. This paper is MTA-MTM-ELTE Paleo contribution No. 337.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund [GINOP-2.3.2-15-2016-00009].