Faunas from Atapuerca at the Early-Middle Pleistocene limit: The ungulates from level TD8 in the context of climatic change

Profound changes in the global climate system started to take place during the late Early Pleistocene, leading to intensive environmental and faunal change and to human dispersal into Europe. These events mark the beginning of a new time and the Early-Middle Pleistocene boundary is taken somewhere in the middle of this drawn out process. It is taken at a palaeomagnetic change, which is convenient, but this does not appear to be close to an important climatic or faunal change. Ten faunal events are recognized in the period from about 1.2 to 0.5 Ma. The event closest to the Early-Middle Pleistocene boundary is one of the minor events and up to now it is recorded in only few localities, principally in TD8.