Neandertals "Doomed" to Extinction?

Yes, according to Clive Finlayson, an ecologist. In a story in Sindhtoday, the argument is put forth that:

Finlayson argues that it was a deadly combination of bad luck and climate change that caused the demise of the Neanderthals.

They were a species caught in the wrong place at the wrong time in a rapidly changing world, he said. “By the time the classic Neanderthals had emerged, they were already a people doomed to extinction,” he said.

A series of ice ages ate away the forest habitats where Neanderthals and their predecessors, Homo heidelbergensis, made a living sneaking up on big game. As their numbers declined, those who remained took refuge in warmer parts of Europe, nearer the Mediterranean. But, a final drop in temperatures that began around 50,000 years ago made even this meager living unsustainable.

Here's the problem that I have with this interpretation: Neandertals appear in the fossil record around 100-150 ky BP and are even found in Southwest Asia around 125 Ky BP (Zuttiyeh). The early Würm glaciation begins around 110 Ky BP and goes roughly up until 34-37 Ky BP. Are we really to believe that for some 70 thousand years, Neandertals adapted to the landscape just fine and then, suddenly, couldn't cut the mustard? It is much more likely that their disappearance had something to do with the arrival of modern humans around 35-40 ky BP. The Aurignacian first appears in the Balkans, at Bacho Kiro Cave around 43 ky and, whether one wants to go the admixture route, the assimilation route or the replacement route, there was clearly contact there and it clearly had an effect on the local Neandertal populations. Maybe he writes about this in the forthcoming (assumedly) paper but nothing of that is clear from this story.

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As Climate Changes, So Do Animals' Diets

A story in e! Science News reports that researchers from The University of Florida have conducted a study of mammalian teeth and discovered that, as climate changes, the diets of many mammals shift to accommodate the changes:

Led by Florida Museum of Natural History vertebrate paleontologist Larisa DeSantis, researchers examined fossil teeth from mammals at two sites representing different climates in Florida:

a glacial period about 1.9 million years ago and a warmer, interglacial period about 1.3 million years ago. The researchers found that interglacial warming resulted in dramatic changes to the diets of animal groups at both sites. The study appears in the June 3 issue of PLoS ONE.

"When people are modeling future mammal distributions, they're assuming that the niches of mammals today are going to be the same in the future," DeSantis said. "That's a huge assumption."

Co-author Robert Feranec, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the New York State Museum, said scientists cannot predict what species will do based on their current ecology.

"The study definitively shows that climate change has an effect on ecosystems and mammals, and that the responses are much more complex than we might think," Feranec said.

We know that when the African climate shifted toward the end of the Miocene, the monkeys adapted to the savannas while the higher apes adapted to the jungles. Rather than do either, one group likely exploited the forest/fringe environment, which allowed them to be more generalists. It is probably this group that gave rise to the earliest hominids.

Neandertals and Climate Change

It is now being suggested that Neandertals died out during a marked shift in the earth's climate, specifically the Iberian peninsula. What makes this climate shift different from those that preceded it is that modern humans were on the landscape and could out-compete the Neandertals, so the story goes. It is clear that there was selection for modern genes and that by 25 000 years ago, Neandertals were a thing of the past but I am still with the hybridization crowd.