The nature and timing of faunal change in the British Isles across the Pleistocene/Holocene transition

Abstract

The abrupt change in climate during the last deglaciation is reflected in the British Isles by a transition from periglacial to temperate faunas. In contrast to the coleopteran record, terrestrial mammals characteristic of the Lateglacial persist for several hundred years in southern Britain after the end of the Younger Dryas (Loch Lomond Stadial, end-Pleistocene). This lag in the vertebrate faunal transition could reflect a delay in the Holocene vegetational succession, coupled with a degree of thermal tolerance in cold-adapted mammals. Nonetheless, distinct faunal transitions are seen in the vertebrate records in both southern Britain and southern Ireland, and there do not appear to be transitional faunas containing contemporaneous glacial and temperate species at the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary.