Cambridge Books Online

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Fossil Primates
Susan Cachel
Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511793844
Online ISBN: 9780511793844
Hardback ISBN: 9781107005303
Paperback ISBN: 9780521183024

Chapter
16 - Late Cenozoic climate changes pp. 255-258
Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511793844.017
Cambridge University Press

16

Late Cenozoic climate changes

Major climatic oscillations that are characteristic of the Pleistocene actually

begin far earlier, in the Late Cenozoic. Seasonality becomes more pronounced.
Temperature and precipitation are no longer equably distributed throughout the
year. Aridity increases, and tree cover is lost in many places. Plants that use the
C4 photosynthetic pathway (largely tropical grasses that can tolerate prolonged
drought) spread very widely, heralding the shift to a C4 world (Cerling &
Ehleringer, 2000). This cooler and drier global climate foreshadows the outright
appearance of continental glaciation during the Pleistocene.
Geochemical signatures of atmospheric carbon dioxide have been followed over
the last 20 million years using boron/calcium ratios from fossil foraminifera.
During the Middle Miocene (1410 mya), atmospheric carbon dioxide was roughly
similar to that of the present, even though global temperatures were about
36C warmer, and sea levels were about 2540 m higher (Tripati et al., 2009).
A major Late Miocene land mammal extinction event termed the Vallesian
Crisis occurred in Western and Central Europe at the end of the Vallesian Land
Mammal Stage beginning 9.6 mya. Many rhinoceroses and tapirs disappeared,
and pig diversity declined. A turnover occurred among the rodents. After the
Vallesian Crisis, murid rodents, which include modern mice and rats, become the
dominant rodents in Late Miocene communities. Atmospheric carbon dioxide
fell during the Late Miocene. Ice sheets in West Antarctica and Greenland grew
when atmospheric carbon dioxide fell signicantly below modern levels. Glacial
conditions thus intensify during the Late Miocene (after ~10 mya) and Late
Pliocene (3.32.4 mya).
One major geographical distinction of the Late Miocene is that the Mediterranean Sea completely dried up at about 5.6 mya. This desiccation was caused by the
closure of the Gibraltar Strait, which cut the Mediterranean off from the Atlantic
Ocean. Evaporation rates exceeded both local rainfall and the amount of river
water debouching into the Mediterranean from the Nile, Rhone, and other major
rivers. The Mediterranean Basin thus became a gigantic salt pan, inimical to life.
Geologists name this event The Messinian Salinity Crisis.1 At 5.33 mya, Atlantic
waters nally incised their way through the closed Gibraltar sill, resulting in an
abrupt, catastrophic ooding of the Mediterranean Basin. This event is known as

A website is devoted to publications and discussions of this event: http://www.messinianonline.it/.

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Late Cenozoic climate changes

the Zanclean Flood, after the rst stage of the Pliocene epoch. It occurred virtually
instantaneously in terms of geological time, taking place between a few months to
2 years. During this geologically eeting period, 90 percent of the water in the
current Mediterranean was transferred into the dry sea basin. In the most catastrophic ood ever recorded in earth history, sea levels may have risen as quickly
as 10 m a day (Garcia-Castellanos et al., 2009).
The desiccated Mediterranean Basin affected not only the geography but also
the local climate of the circum-Mediterranean region. Although animal and plant
dispersal could have occurred through the basin at the beginning of desiccation,
and before the full onslaught of the Zanclean Flood, conditions within the basin
during the height of the desiccation were absolutely inimical to life. Conditions
would have supercially resembled the alien, at, salt desert landscape west of the
Great Salt Lake in northwestern Utah, USA (Figure 16.1). However, evaporitic
sediments in the Mediterranean Basin would have been kilometers thick, and the
basin itself would have sat 35 km below sea level. This formed the largest salt
basin known to geologists. Its white and radiant, shining surface would have been
visible from Mars. The massively deep evaporites were mostly composed of halite
(rock salt), gypsum, and anhydrite. Small brine lakes would occasionally appear,
but the absence of fresh water and the unearthly heat on the abyssal plain were
incompatible with multicellular life. Anhydrite evaporates out from water that is
warmer than 35C. These temperatures, coupled with the blast-furnace heat

Figure 16.1. Landscape west of the Great Salt Lake, northwestern Utah, USA. The salt ats of

the desiccated Miocene Mediterranean Basin would have resembled this landscape,
although the Mediterranean salt deposits were piled up to a depth of several kilometers.
Courtesy of Dr. Craig S. Feibel.

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Late Cenozoic climate changes

radiating from the bright, reective salt and the great depth below sea level
which accentuates ambient temperatureswould make a formidable barrier to
animal and plant dispersion through the desiccated basin. Great rivers like the
Nile and Rhone were rapidly cutting down their beds as they debouched into the
empty basin, and some oases of life could have endured in such isolated waterfall/
river delta areas. Apart from these islands of life, animal and plant life could not
have endured the extreme conditions of the Mediterranean Basin.
The desiccated basin would have had an impact on the climate of the entire
circum-Mediterranean region. In fact, signals of arid climate and atmospheric dust
associated with the Messinian Crisis are found in deep-sea cores off the coast of
West Africa, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf (de Menocal, 1995). In addition,
one could infer the hostile effect of salt storms, or blowing clouds of airborne salt,
on local animals and plants. Salt storms occur today around the Great Salt Lake of
Utah and the rapidly shrinking Aral Sea of Central Asia, when high winds sweep
across the surrounding salt ats. Salt-encrusted soils resulting from these storms
can become too saline to support local plant species. The vast majority of land
plants are intolerant of salinity. Yet, salt-resistant plant species may not be edible
for local animal species. Community composition alters as animal and plant
species change to accommodate saline soil composition.
During the Late Cenozoic, climatic deterioration occurred worldwide. Major
extinctions of land mammals took place. This was especially pronounced in North
America, where the fossil record is dense and well dated. The Messinian Crisis
coincides with the North American Late Hemphillian Land Mammal Stage. This is
an extinction event caused by a sudden burst in aridity and drastic increases in
extremes of seasonal temperature. Many herbivorous mammals in North America
exhibited catastrophic extinctions, especially browsing taxa. Some mammal
groups (horses, camels, tapirs) survived only along relict woodland habitats of
the Gulf Coastal Plain (Webb et al., 1995). An astounding 74 percent of mammal
genera and 18 percent of mammal families went extinct in the Late Hemphillian
beginning about 6 mya. This major North American mammal extinction parallels
extinction events in Eurasia. Eurasian hominoid primate extinctions occurred
against the general background of Late Miocene mammal extinctions. The hominoid fragility of species, and their absolute ties to disappearing woodland and
forest, explains the hominoid extinctions of the Late Miocene.
With the advent of the Pleistocene, climatic uctuations that occurred since the
Late Miocene become markedly more frequent and increase in amplitude. Details
of the last 2 my of global climate change are very well known, and have also been
correlated to pronounced uctuations in global sea level. The link between global
temperature and sea level is caused by the encapsulation of sea water in continental ice sheets when global temperatures are low. The sea level changes are
referred to as oxygen isotope stages (OIS), because they are established by the
ratio of isotopes O16 to O18 retrieved from ice cores or deep-sea sediment cores.
These oxygen isotope stages are counted back from the present stage (OIS 1),
which is occurring during an interval of warm global climate. Oxygen isotope

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Late Cenozoic climate changes

Figure 16.2. Paleogeography of the earth during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM),
21,00018,000 years ago. Courtesy of Dr. Christopher Scotese.

stages that have odd numbers are therefore associated with warm climate, and
even numbers with cold climate.
Pleistocene land bridges sometimes connected areas now separated by water
gaps, because the lowering of global sea level exposed large areas of continental
shelf. The effects of these land bridges on land mammal dispersion are particularly
strong in the region of the Bering Strait and Australasia. In Australasia, most of
the islands of Indonesia have Pleistocene land connections, and are connected in
turn to the Asian mainland. Eventual sundering of Pleistocene land connections
has sometimes caused local island species of primates to evolve, e.g. the endemic
macaque species of Sulawesi, Taiwan, or Japan. This vicariance phenomenon is
directly attributable to allopatric speciation. In fact, one can argue that the great
species diversity in the catarrhine genera Macaca, Presbytis, and Hylobates is
caused by the sundering of Pleistocene land bridges.
The last great worldwide eruption of cold is referred to as the Last Glacial
Maximum or LGM (Figure 16.2). Because of the recent time period, ne details of
paleogeography and paleoclimate are known for the Pleistocene, particularly the
LGM. Time-averaging has not had a chance to eradiacate or collapse the data.
A special advantage of studying the Pleistocene is that many living species of
animals and plants have Pleistocene representatives. This allows researchers to
study topics such as rates of evolutionary change from ancestor to descendant, the
emergence and dispersion of species from refuge areas (refugia) after the dissipation of continental ice sheets, and the morphological response of organisms to
major climate change. The Pleistocene is therefore a time period producing rich
investigation into evolutionary theory and processes.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511793844.017
Cambridge Books Online Cambridge University Press, 2015