Ricerc@Sapienza

Mediterranean climates are characterized by strong seasonal contrasts between dry summers and wet winters. Changes in winter rainfall are critical for regional socioeconomic development, but are difficult to simulate accurately(1) and reconstruct on Quaternary timescales. This is partly because regional hydroclimate records that cover multiple glacial-interglacial cycles(2,3) with different orbital geometries, global ice volume and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations are scarce. Moreover, the underlying mechanisms of change and their persistence remain unexplored.

The Lateglacial/early Holocene sediments from the ancient lake at Hasseldala Port, southern Sweden provide an important archive for the environmental and climatic shifts at the end of the last ice age and the transition into the present Interglacial. The existing multi-proxy data set highlights the complex interplay of physical and ecological changes in response to climatic shifts and lake status changes. Yet, it remains unclear how microorganisms, such as Archaea, which do not leave microscopic features in the sedimentary record, were affected by these climatic shifts.

The Ceprano human calvarium, dated around 400,000 yr, is a well-known fossil specimen. It represents significant evidence of hominin presence in the Italian peninsula during the Middle Pleistocene and may be considered representative of an archaic variant of the widespread and polymorphic species Homo heidelbergensis. Since its discovery (March 1994), systematic surveys in the Campogrande area near Ceprano, central Italy, identified 12 localities (CG1-12) with archaeological and/or paleontological assemblages.