Vegetation change and evolutionary response of large mammal fauna during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition in temperate northern East Asia

Abstract

We present new pollen data from a drilling core from the North China Plain which illustrate the nature of vegetation evolution in the temperate zone of Asia during an interval containing the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT), ~1.2–0.7 Ma. Results show that, from 1.7–1.2 Ma, closed needle-leaved and broadleaved mixed forest predominated. The most important vegetation change event occurred at 1.2 Ma when there was a decline in coniferous forest and a significant increase in Artemisia, Chenopodiaceae and Poaceae grassland. There was a continued degradation of the regional forest vegetation and its replacement by woody grassland about 0.7 Ma. Patterns of vegetation change correlate closely with the key climate fluctuations of the MPT and coincide with major turnover events of large mammalian fauna (>10 kg) in China. In particular, >50% of large mammalian species became extinct in the course of the forest decline; however, they were replaced by new mammalian species after 0.7 Ma. Comparison of the vegetation and faunal records indicates that the process of forest replacement by grassland in the northern temperate zone during the MPT was associated with an acceleration of the rate of turnover of the large mammalian fauna, in terms of extinction and speciation.