Paleoclimatologie quantitative: Methode fondee sur les grands mammiferes quaternaires et premiere application aux regions sud de la france
Abstract In trying to reconstitute Quaternary paleoclimates one has to use the ecology of living species “like a mirror image”, but then only those which have not changed since the Pleistocene. During glaciations, the temperate European regions, such as France, received some “cold” immigrant species added to the extant temperate endemic species; the associations of large mammals during each cold period correspond to the climatic characteristics which these different species tolerated, i.e., precipitation, temperature, evapotranspiration and length of vegetation period. We can determine the climatic thresholds of each level studied. As an application, I have selected the south of France during period of 10 000 years, between ca. 20 000 BP and ca. 10 000 BP. The large mammal faunas allow one to distinguish two different climatic regions — as at the present time: the southeast, under Mediterranean influence and the southwest, under Atlantic influence; another observation can be made, i.e., that the transition from cold to temperate climate went through a particularly dry period with a low precipitation of only 300 mm/year. This is an example of quantitative climatology based on continental faunas, but it would be possible to produce a larger work on southern Europe using the best results from modern excavations.