Move, adapt or die: mammals and birds of the last ice age in Somerset
Monday 12th May 2025, 6pm BST
Speaker: Professor Danielle Schreve (University of Bristol)
The last 60 000 years have witnessed some of the most extreme and rapid turnover events in the animals and birds of NW Europe. Britain’s position, at the edge of the North Atlantic, enhanced the impacts of abrupt climatic and environmental change on local faunal communities. These forced species to alter their range, leading to the creation and break-up of novel faunal communities and ultimately (for some), local or complete extinction. This lecture will present evidence for faunal turnover from the last Ice Age, drawn from recent and ongoing work in cave sites in the Mendip Hills of Somerset. The evidence from these sites forms the environmental backdrop to a critical period in the early human occupation of Britain, namely the return of Neanderthals during the last cold stage, their replacement by modern humans and recolonisation after the last glacial maximum, around 20 000 years ago.
This is one of a series of related talks celebrating 150 years since the first official excavations at Creswell Crags, and links to a temporary exhibition (to be installed in spring 2025) on the same theme.
This talk will be hosted via Zoom webinar. The Zoom link will be sent to your email address the day before the event (remember to check spam/junk/other folders in your inbox).
This talk is free to attend but we do ask for a suggested donation of £4. This money really does mean we can continue this online talk series. We are very grateful for any support you can give.
You may be interested in our Patreon channel (https://www.patreon.com/CreswellCrags), which contains recordings of our past online talks, in addition to other digital content.
