RODENTS AS INDICATORS OF PAST CLIMATES: APPLICATION TO THREE ASSEMBLAGES FROM NORTHERN FRANCE

Small vertebrates, and especially rodents, are known to be good indicators of past climate and landscape changes. In Europe, models were elaborated on the basis of faunal associations, more particularly on rodents such as Arvicolinae, in order to assess temperature and vegetation changes over time. Among the different methods, the transfer function can efficiently complement data from other paleoecological indices and refine our knowledge of the paleoenvironmental context of Pleistocene human occupations. This method is based on the relationship between number of species and mean annual temperatures and allows to quantify paleotemperatures. In the present article, we applied this method on three fossil assemblages of Middle and Late Pleistocene age from northern France, a region still little considered in terms of microfaunal studies. We have thus demonstrated a good fit of the transfer function method with other more classic paleoecological methods, during climatic transitions in context of relatively cold or temperate periods according to the sites and the periods. All these methods appear to be complementary, their combination allowing to refine our vision of the paleoenvironments and their evolution over time. However, a good knowledge of the taphonomic context appears essential for reliable interpretation of results.