Abstract
It has often been stated that the amount of evolutionary change occurring in the Quaternary was greater than in previous periods, as a result of the profound environmental changes which occurred. In very general terms, the mammalian evidence bears out this suggestion. Comparison of faunal lists for different stages of the British Quaternary, for example (taken from Stuart 1982), indicates not a single mammalian species common to the earliest Pleistocene (ca. 1.7–1.5 Ma) and late Pleistocene (ca. 120 ka BP to present, including both ‘cold’ and ‘warm’ faunas). These changes are a conflation of extinctions, immigrations and evolutionary transitions, but the implication of substantial and rapid faunal turnover is clear.
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Lister, A.M. (1997). The evolutionary response of vertebrates to Quaternary environmental change. In: Huntley, B., Cramer, W., Morgan, A.V., Prentice, H.C., Allen, J.R.M. (eds) Past and Future Rapid Environmental Changes. NATO ASI Series, vol 47. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-60599-4_23
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