14 DAY TRIAL // In a set of recent investigations, whose goal was to assess the way Europe looked like during the Late Miocene epoch, experts were able to uncover details pertaining to the apes that once lived on the Old Continent. It would appear that creatures such as the ones that today can only be found in rain forests were fairly common here, but that they disappeared due to a massive climate swing. According to scientists, the extinction / migration took place some 9 million years ago.
One of the main catalysts for the changes was the fact that the large swaths of forest that covered the continent millions of years ago eventually disappeared. As the climate changed, woods were replaced by grasslands. This in itself did not equal instant death for the creatures, but they found it impossible to survive on land. Accustomed to living in trees, they followed the retreating forests out of Europe. This is why the apes still endure in Africa and Asia today. The changes were not as drastic there as they were on the Old Continent, and so the animals could adapt.
According to Dr Gildas Merceron, who is based in France, at the Claude Bernard University Lyon 1, the best way to figure out what happened with animals living in Europe all those years ago is to look at fossils of other, similar creatures. In this case, the scientists are looking at antilope fossils. The expert was the principal investigator on the study, and also the leader of the research team that looked over the fossils. The work covered extensive swaths of land, ranging form Germany and Hungary to Greece, and its main goal was to determine what the animals of that period ate most of the time. Details of the result appear in the latest issue of the top publication Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
“We may therefore hypothesize that the drop in diversity among European primates was a direct response to habitat loss and more homogeneous environmental conditions. Recent studies demonstrate that environmental heterogeneity, coupled with stable climatic conditions, is a major factor in maintaining high specific diversity,” the researchers write in the journal entry. He said that monkeys such as the extinct Mesopithecus disappeared on account of natural variations, occurring over millions of years. But man-made climate change can take place in centuries.