Available online http://amq.aiqua.it ISSN (online): 2279-7335 Alpine and Mediterranean Quaternary, Vol. 31 (Quaternary: Past, Present, Future - AIQUA Conference, Florence, 13-14/06/2018), 49 - 53 BIRDS FROM THE LATE PLEISTOCENE: ENVIRONMENTAL AND CLIMATIC SCENARIOS BETWEEN THE ALPS AND THE GREAT ADRIATIC PLAIN (NORTH-EASTERN ITALY) Lisa Carrera Università degli Studi di Ferrara, Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Sezione di Preistoria e Antropologia, Ferrara, Italy Corresponding author: L. Carrera ABSTRACT: In this work we show the potential of bird remains as environmental and climatic proxies, reconstructing the environmental scenarios of the piedmont area of North-Eastern Italy across the MIS3/MIS2 boundary, on the basis of the fossil avifauna that we found in Rio Secco Cave (PN) and Buso Doppio del Broion Cave (VI) in the Berici Hills. The results indicate the presence of a mosaic of envi- ronments, with open and forested areas and water and rocky habitats in a context of cold climatic conditions as indicated by the finding of the cold-adapted species Bubo scandiacus and Lagopus muta. KEYWORDS: Birds, palaeoenvironment, late Pleistocene, north-eastern Italy, Rio Secco Cave, Buso Doppio del Broion Cave 1. INTRODUCTION Western Palearctic avifauna consists of more than 500 breeding species, each of which has very specific ecological needs and a strong link with his habitat, par- ticularly with the type of vegetation: this aspect makes fossil avifauna a coherent palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic proxy for the whole Pleistocene, as most of extant bird species are reported in the Western Palearctic since the Early Pleistocene (Tyrberg, 1998, 2008). Resident species are more useful than migratory ones for this purpose, as they live in the same habitat during the whole year. Fossil birds are also useful to infer past climatic conditions. The Pleistocene climatic oscillations have shaped, over the course of time, the range of many species, which followed the shift of their ecological niche. For instance, during cold phases, Mediterranean Europe represented a “refuge area” for arctic, subarctic and boreal species (e.g. the snowy owl, Bubo scandiacus) (Holm & Svennning, 2014; Sanchez Marco, 2004). The presence of these species in the fossil record of Western Palearctic mid-latitudes repre- sents a proxy of a climate colder than present. The fos- sil record of other bird species, like the rock ptarmigan (Lagopus muta), indicates that they were more wide- spread and lived at lower heights than today during the cold phases, as they followed the descent of the vegeta- tional zones. The finding of these species at low heights in the mid-latitudes, can be used with caution as a cli- mate proxy. We point out that only evidence concerning strong latitudinal or altitudinal changes in the geographic distribution of a bird species should be considered as a climate proxy (Bedetti & Pavia, 2001; Carrera et al., 2018; Tyrberg, 2010). We can also infer past climate changes on the basis of the changes in the bird species associations across the layers of a single deposit. This approach can be based, in detail, on the presence of a climate marker in a layer, on changes in the relative abundance of a species, or on variations in the propor- tion of taxa from different habitats (open, rocky, water, forest) (Bedetti & Pavia, 2007; Tomek et al., 2012). To obtain a representative result, this analysis should be applied to deposits with a high number of bird remains and a long stratigraphic sequence. In this work, we carried out a systematic analysis of the avifaunal remains from the deposits of two Palaeo- lithic sites in North-Eastern Italy: Buso Doppio del Broion Cave (VI) and Rio Secco Cave (PN). In detail, we ana- lysed the avifaunal assemblages coming from the layers referable, from both sites, to the MIS3/MIS2 boundary, in order to infer past climate and environmental characteris- tics of this geographic area in a context of increasingly harsher climate (Clark et al., 2009; Monegato et al., 2017). Both sites are located along the connection area between the so-called “Great Adriatic Plain”, the large plain which emerged in the northern Adriatic area during the cold phases of the Late Pleistocene (Antonioli, 2012), and the piedmont fringe (Fig. 1). The Rio Secco Cave is located on the Pradis Plateau (Eastern Carnic Pre-Alps), at an elevation of 580 m a.s.l. The plateau faces the Friulian plain to the south. The Late Pleistocene sedi- ments cover a time span from 50 to 30 ka, with evidence of short-term Gravettian and Mousterian occupations. The layer 6, an anthropic layer contained in the Macro- Unit BR1, yielded an age of 33,480–30,020 yr cal BP, assessing its placement in the early Gravettian period (Peresani et al., 2014; Talamo et al., 2014). The Buso Doppio del Broion Cave is a cavity formed by a system of galleries which opens at 150 m a.s.l. in the eastern slope of the Berici Hills (an uplifted karst plateau isolated in the https://doi.org/10.26382/AIQUA.2018.AIQUAconference alluvial plain). The deposits of Buso Doppio del Broion Cave, below the upper reworked sediment, contain scanty Gravettian lithic implements. The sequence probably covers a time span including the onset of the LGM (Layer 1) and the preceding millennia, on the basis of the similarity of the lithic material to a radiocarbon dated palaeolithic site located in the proximity of the cave (Gurioli et al., 2006; Romandini et al., 2015). The archaeological excavation in these two caves is ongo- ing, carried out by the University of Ferrara. 2. MATERIALS AND METHODS The systematic analysis of the avifaunal remains involved 194 avian remains from the Macro-Units BR1 and BR2 of Rio Secco Cave, and 775 bird remains from layers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 of Buso Doppio del Broion Cave. The sediments were excavated in 50 × 50 cm or 33 × 33 cm squares and then wet sieved. For the system- atic analysis we used two modern bird skeletal com- parative collections: the “Marco Pavia Ornithological Collection” (MPOC), stored at the Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra of the Torino University, and the one held at Sezione di Scienze Preistoriche e Antro- pologiche of the Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici of the University of Ferrara. The fossil material is stored in the Sezione di Scienze Preistoriche e Antropologiche of the Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici of the University of Ferrara. Bird taxonomy follows Del Hoyo et al. (2014, 2016). 3. RESULTS We identified a great variety of bird species from the two deposits (Tab. 1). The bird taxa recognized in this work all belong to the extant Western Palearctic avifauna. In the Rio Secco Cave bird assemblage, in detail, we identified 166 remains (85.6 %) which have been assigned to 31 bird taxa (18 species) (Carrera et al., 2018). 28 remains are left as indeterminate Aves. In the Buso Doppio del Broion bird assemblage, we identi- fied 634 remains (81.8 %) which have been assigned to 69 bird taxa (44 species), while 141 remains are left as indeterminate Aves (Carrera et al., in press). Among the identified remains, for both assemblages, several re- mains have been attributed to species-level taxa and others to supraspecific taxa, because of their fragmenta- tion or because of the lack of diagnostic features. 4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION The bird species identified allowed palaeoenviron- mental and palaeoclimatic reconstructions. Among the bird taxa found at Rio Secco Cave, L. muta and P. col- laris suggest the presence of open areas with low vege- tation and rocky exposures close to the cave, while P. perdix and C. coturnix indicates the presence of open grasslands/shrublands. L. tetrix, T. urogallus, P. canus, N. caryocatactes, P. pyrrhula and L. curvirostra indicate the presence of conifer or mixed forests, while F. atra suggests the presence of slow-flowing water bodies (Cramp, 1998). L. muta is absent today from the area of the site, as it currently lives at higher heights, above the tree line. Its presence during the end of MIS 3 at about 580 m a.s.l. indicates that mountain open environments had to be located at lower heights, and thus it can be considered an indicator of a climate colder than the current one (Carrera et al., 2018). The deposit of Buso Doppio del Broion Cave pro- vided a wide range of bird species useful for palaeoenvi- ronmental reconstructions. The presence of open habi- tats like grasslands, shrublands and steppe is sug- 50 Fig. 1 - Map of Northern Italy with the geographic position of Buso Doppio del Broion Cave (A) and Rio Secco Cave (B). The light grey area indicates the extension of the Great Adriatic Plain during the time span investigated. Carrera L. 51 Tab. 1 - Bird taxa from the Macro-Units BR1 and BR2 of Rio Secco Cave (Carrera et al., 2018) and from the layers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 of Buso Doppio del Broion Cave (Carrera et al., in press). NR indicates the number of remains for each taxon. Fossil birds as a proxy for palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic reconstructions gested by the presence of C. coturnix, P. perdix, G. grus, T. tetrax, A. noctua, B. scandiacus, F. tinnunculus, E. alpestris and cf. P. petronia. Other species indicate the presence of rocky cliffs and exposures, such as A. pallidus/apus, A. chrysaetos, P. graculus, P. pyrrho- corax, C. corax, P. rupestris, T. muraria and P. collaris. T. urogallus, L. tetrix, S. ulula, A. funereus, A. gentilis, P. viridis, N. caryocatactes, T. troglodytes, P. pyrrhula and L. curvirostra indicate the presence of conifer or mixed forests. Finally, a variety of water bird species such as A. ferina, A. fuligula, S. querquedula, A. platyrhynchos, A. crecca, G. chloropus and G. gallinago, suggests the presence of slow-flowing water bodies, wetlands or marshes near the site (Cramp, 1998). The finding of two cold-adapted boreal species, B. scandiacus and S. ulula, both currently absent from the Italian avifauna (Brichetti & Fracasso, 2015), indicates a climate colder than present during the time span investi- gated. Other indications of a climate colder than present is the finding, at low heights of L. tetrix, T. urogallus, P. graculus, P. pyrrhocorax and P. collaris, which currently live, in the Alps, in high mountain environments only (Carrera et al., in press). The avifaunal assemblages from both the sites provided a coherent environmental framework for the geographic area of connection between the piedmont area and the Great Adriatic Plain, constituted by a mo- saic of different habitats. This frame is further supported by the results of the analysis of the pollen records from the Fimon lake deposits and the Azzano Decimo core, in the Friulian Plain (about 40 km south of Rio Secco Cave) (Pini et al., 2009, 2010). During the LGM, the landscape of the piedmont area was constituted by an extensive belt of boreal trees, while the nearby plain was characterized by large steppe habitats, dominated by Artemisia and juniper (Monegato et al., 2015). Despite the richness of the Italian palaeornithologi- cal record, contributions which deal with avian fossil remains are few with respect to those concerning mam- mal fossil remains, maybe because of the scarcity of bird skeletal comparative collections. 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