More about the Network
This Network focuses on the environmental changes that forced the evolution of the European hominids during the late Neogene period between 14 million and five million years ago. The great apes - i.e. chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas - along with the hominids, evolved from their common ancestors during the late Neogene, yet until recently European studies and fossils had made relatively little contribution to worldwide knowledge of this period of hominoid evolution. The Network will therefore foster collaboration between laboratories working either directly in hominoid evolution or in the study of environmental and climatic changes that influenced the course of that evolution during the late Neogene period.
The upper Neogene is a crucial period in the process of hominization that culminated in the evolution of man. Latest evidence suggests that the bipedal process probably originated in the middle of this period, during the late Miocene around 6 million years ago, at a time of profound environmental changes. The development of Antarctic glaciation both accompanied and accelerated falling global temperatures, which in turn led to the drying out of the European area and associated interchange of fauna between Europe and central Asia. At the same time, major geological changes such as the rising of the Himalayas, and the opening up of the Red Sea, created barriers that encouraged greater and more rapid separation of mammals into different species that then evolved in isolation.
Knowledge of the ecosystems in which hominoids evolved during the late Miocene is still incomplete, and there have been few attempts to integrate all the available data to build a more comprehensive record. Yet much better data is now available, exploiting modern techniques of palaeoenvironmental analysis, based on isotopes, pollen, and small mammals. Therefore one objective of the Network is to construct a Neogene database containing information linking climate and faunal evolution during this time. This database will complement, and be structurally linked with, a similar database now under development within another ESF Scientific programme, Climate and Fauna: a database of the Quaternary mammals of Europe.
The European fossil record of this period has also improved markedly recently, following findings such as the recent discovery of a fairly complete face of Dryopithecus laietanus along with other related remains in Can Llobateras, Spain and cranial remains in the Sinap section, in Turkey. As a result it is now possible to establish theories about the philogeny of Eurasian hominoids, charting the main events in their evolution and comparing them with their African relatives.
Such theories that have been developed in the light of the recent facial and skeletal discoveries will be the focus of the third workshop: Hominoid evolution in Eurasia.
Two other workshops have been dedicated to building a better record of environmental and climatic changes during this period, and understanding their impact on hominoid evolution. These are:
The Vallesian
The Vallesian mammal stage coincided with the vital transition from the wet sub tropical forests of the middle Neogene to the more open grasslands and scrublands that prevail now in warm temperate climates. This led to intense faunal interchange across the whole Holarctic region (note also that Holarctic means literally "whole Arctic", and is defined as all northern hemisphere land masses north of the tropic of Cancer).
Climatic and environmental change
This will involve discussions between scientists in palaeontology, stratigraphy, climatology, and sedimentology, on the intense climatic and environmental shifts during the late Neogene.
This Network was approved by the ESF Executive Council in May 1995 for a three-year period.
