John Stewart is an evolutionary palaeoecologist with broad research interests encompassing the use of faunas in reconstructing Pleistocene and Holocene ecologies, understanding the nature, timing and location of ice age refugia for species, and building and testing molecular biogeographical hypotheses on how species respond to environmental change.
Humans seem to have been adapted to the last ice age in similar ways to wolves and bears, according to our recent study, challenging longstanding theories about how and where our ancestors lived during this glacial period.
Populations of the same species that live in different places often have different genetics to each other. More recently scientists have studied how climate change has altered the distribution of these genetically distinct populations of species. Our team's new study, led by Oxala García-Rodríguez at Bournemouth University, took a different approach and reviewed the genetic history of 23 common mammals in Europe. In addition to humans, these included rodents such as bank voles and red squirrels, insectivores like shrews and hedgehogs, ungulates like red deer and wild boar, and carnivores like brown bears and weasels.
These areas, known as refugia, are locations where species retreated to survive during periods when environmental conditions were unfavourable elsewhere. For the mammals we studied, these refugia would have been occupied since the height of the last glaciation, at least. These refugia were probably the warmest areas or places where it was easiest for the animals to find food.
This pattern includes Homo sapiens too. Neanderthals had already been extinct for around 20,000 years by this point. RELATED STORIES—Ancient DNA from South Africa rock shelter reveals the same human population stayed there for 9,000 years
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