TEMPERATURE-GRADIENTS IN NORTHERN EUROPE DURING THE LAST GLACIAL-HOLOCENE TRANSITION (14-9 C-14 KYR BP) INTERPRETED FROM COLEOPTERAN ASSEMBLAGES

Late-glacial and early Holocene climatic conditions have been reconstr ucted for northern Europe using the mutual climatic range (MCR) palaeo climate method based on fossil coleopteran assemblages. Altogether, be etle faunas from 77 sites have been analysed ranging from Ireland in t he west to Poland and Finland in the east, and MCR estimates calculate d. The results are plotted on 16 maps, each representative of a select ed time-slice covering the period from 14.5 C-14 kyr BP to 9.0 C-14 ky r BP. Eight of the maps show the MCR estimates of T-max (mean temperat ure of the warmest month) derived from each site for which data are av ailable, while the remainder show estimated T-max isotherms interpolat ed from these values. It can be demonstrated that at times the thermal climate was fairly uniform throughout the study area, whereas at othe rs temperature gradients were much steeper than they are in the region today. There also appears to be a distinct contrast between cold peri ods, when contours trended NW-SE, and warmer periods, when contours tr end W-E or even NE-SW. The pattern of climatic changes that emerges is shown to be very different from the traditional view that has been us ed up to now as a template for classifying Late-glacial climatic event s on a wide, even global, scale. The suddenness and intensity of chang es in the thermal climate may have been partially responsible for an a pparent lack of equilibrium between the flora and fauna of the time an d the physical environment in which they lived. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.