The Jou Puerta cave (Asturias, NW Spain): A MIS 3 large mammal assemblage with mixture of cold and temperate elements

The cave of Jou Puerta (Asturias, NW Spain), provided an interesting large mammal assemblage including cold-adapted elements like Coelodonta antiquitatis and Mammuthus primigenius, which are not frequent in Iberian sites. The chronology of the fossils ranges from 36.6 to 302 Cal ka BP, corresponding to MIS 3, an episode characterized by fast climate changes, from extreme cold to temperate conditions. The origin of the bone accumulation is related to a natural trap, so most of the fossils were unusually well preserved. The woolly rhinoceros remains yielded one of the most numerous and well preserved populations of this species from the Iberian Peninsula, which allowed carrying out a detailed comparative anatomical study. The faunal composition of Jou Puerta was statistically analyzed in comparison with other Iberian and Western European fossil assemblages where C antiquitatis and/or M. primigenius occurred. The results showed that temperate ungulate species are predominant at most of the Iberian assemblages, including Jou Puerta, resulting in a particular mixture of temperate and cold elements which does not reflect the typical faunal composition of the Eurasian mammoth steppe. This particular situation supports the idea that these cold taxa only reached the Peninsula occasionally, during the coldest episodes of the Pleistocene, resulting in a mixing of cold and temperate faunas, instead of a faunal replacing. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.