paleonet Early/Middle Pleistocene Transitions

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Dear Colleagues,

We have slightly extended the deadline for those wishing to attend the meeting below.  Please contact Martin Head SOON if you would like to register.  If you are unable to attend but would like to contribute to a planned volume on Early/Middle Pleistocene transitions, we would very much like to hear from you.

Thank you, and apologies for cross-posting.

Martin.


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 Early/Middle Pleistocene Transitions: The Land-Ocean Evidence
                        4th April 2003
                    University of Cambridge, UK

Sponsored by: the Godwin Institute for Quaternary Research, INQUA
Commission on Stratigraphy, The Quaternary Research Association, and the
INQUA Subcommission on European Quaternary Stratigraphy.

Orbital obliquity at 41 ka cycles which had dominated the earlier part of the Pleistocene was superceded progressively about a million years ago by a 100 ka rhythm of orbital eccentricity, crucially accompanied by increased-amplitude climatic oscillations. The glacial-interglacial world in which we now live is the result of these changes, and the impact on terrestrial and marine biota has been profound and manifold. The purpose of this one-day meeting is to explore the biotic responses to climatic and physical changes that characterized the Early / Middle Pleistocene transition in both the marine and terrestrial realms.


                                SPEAKERS

HELGA FLESCHE KLEIVEN (Bergen, Norway): Climate variability and thermohaline circulation changes on orbital to sub-orbital timescales during the mid-Pleistocene: results from the sub-polar North and South Atlantic Ocean.

ADRIAN LISTER (University College London, UK): Mammalian faunal turnover in Europe through the Early-Middle Pleistocene transition.

MARK MASLIN (University College London, UK): Mid-Pleistocene Revolution: A switch from an obliquity to a precession climate system? (with Andy Ridgwell).

ERIN L. MCCLYMONT (Durham, UK): The surface ocean response to the Mid Pleistocene Climate Transition: a biomarker perspective (with Antoni Rosell-Melˆ©, and Jerry M. Lloyd).

JOHN MCNABB (Southampton, UK): North and South. Archaeology in Africa and Europe across the Lower to Middle Pleistocene transition.

MICHAEL D. PETRAGLIA (Cambridge, UK): Pleistocene environmental change and human evolution: adaptive and behavioural responses.

ENNO SCHEFUSS (Bremen, Germany): Tropical environmental changes at the Mid-Pleistocene transition: a lipid biomarker perspective. (with J.H.F. Jansen, J.S. Sinninghe Damsté, and R.R. Schneider).

JEAN-PIERRE SUC (Lyon, France): Pollen records and climatic cycles in the Western and Central Mediterranean between 2.7 and 0.5 Ma. Discrepancies with the Eastern Mediterranean?

THIJS VAN KOLFSCHOTEN (Leiden, Netherlands): The mammalian response to changes in cyclicity: How the European mammalian fauna evolved around the Early/Middle Pleistocene transition (with Anastasia K. Markova).

The ICS working group on the early-middle Pliocene boundary: preliminary results (compiled by DAVIDE CASTRADORI, presented by Martin Head).

A mid-afternoon round-table discussion on the Early/Middle Pleistocene boundary will be chaired by CHARLES TURNER (Cambridge, UK)

A poster session will run throughout the day.


Conference organisers:
Martin J. Head and Philip L. Gibbard
Godwin Institute for Quaternary Research
Department of Geography
University of Cambridge
Downing Place,
Cambridge CB2 3EN ENGLAND, U.K.
Email: mh300@cam.ac.uk or plg1@cam.ac.uk



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Dr Martin J. Head
Department of Geography
University of Cambridge
Downing Place, Cambridge  CB2 3EN
ENGLAND, U.K.

Phone:      (01223) 339751
Fax:        (01223) 333392
Email:      mh300@cam.ac.uk
Home page:  http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~mh300
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