Rafael Marquina Blasco

University of Valencia | UV · Department of Geology

The Columbretes Islands (eastern Spain) comprise a volcanic archipelago 50 km off the eastern Spanish coast. Illa Grossa is the main island of the archipelago. After the settlement of humans during the mid-19th century, strong modifications in biodiversity took place, including the reduction of the non-flying vertebrate fauna to a single taxon, Pod...

El Salt (Middle Palaeolithic; Alcoi, Spain) is a key site for understanding the disappearance of Neanderthals in the eastern Iberian Peninsula, a process that is observed along its stratigraphic sequence. To improve our understanding of the palaeoclimatic context in which this process took place, we applied the UDA-ODA discrimination technique to t...

The small-vertebrates’ assemblage recovered comes from Units I to IV from El Salt site (Alcoi, Spain). The sample is composed by nearly 310 remains, and includes one toad ( Epidalea calamita ), two lizards (Lacertidae indet. and Chalcides cf. bedriagai ), two snakes ( Coronella cf. girondica and cf. Coronella sp.), two insectivores ( Crocidura sp....

The locality of El Salt (Alcoi, Spain) is a key site for understanding the extirpation of Neanderthals in the eastern part of Iberia. In this paper, we analyse an assemblage of amphibians and reptiles from Stratigraphic Unit V (45.2 ± 3.4 ka to 44.7 ± 3.4 ka), which corresponds to one of the last regional records of Neanderthals, to improve knowled...

El Salt is an important reference site for understanding the extinction of Neanderthal populations in the eastern Iberian Peninsula during MIS 3. In this paper, we describe the small mammal assemblage from Stratigraphic Unit V, the youngest unit with evidence of human presence, based on nearly 1300 specimens. A total of seven rodents (Microtus arva...

El Salt is an important reference site for understanding the extinction of Neanderthal populations in the eastern Iberian Peninsula during MIS 3. In this paper, we describe the small mammal assemblage from Stratigraphic Unit V, the youngest unit with evidence of human presence, based on nearly 1300 specimens. A total of seven rodents (Microtus arva...

There are few examples of small vertebrate’ works centred in the Holocene in the south-eastern Iberian Peninsula. In this sense, Units I to IV from El Salt site (Alcoi, Spain) has been traditionally ascribed to the Holocene. The microvertebrate assemblage (350 remains) recovered from the water-sieving of almost 100 kg is composed by seven rodent sp...

This paper presents a multiproxy palaeoenvironmental study from Abric del Pastor (Alcoy, Spain), a rock shelter which has yielded evidence for Middle Palaeolithic human occupation. The sedimentary sequence has been analysed for lipid biomarker n-alkane abundances (ACL, CPI), compound specific leaf wax δ2H and δ13C, and bulk organic geochemistry (TO...

Understanding past climate and the mechanisms of climate change remain major challenges in scientific research. The Mutual Ecogeographic Range (MER) method for climatic reconstruction uses the current geographical distribution of fossil assemblages to infer palaeoclimatic conditions. Current species distributions used in the MER method are usually...

The deficient management of the paleontological heritage through the environmental impact assessment procedures from the Valencian public administrations, linked mainly to the lack of competent technical means in the matter, results in an almost abandonment of it. On the contrary, the archaeological heritage has a series of perfectly structured too...

El Salt is emerging as a reference site for the study of the disappearance of Neanderthal populations in the Eastern Iberian Peninsula during MIS 3. The small vertebrate assemblage analysed in this work is framed within this general objective and comes from Stratigraphic Unit V, the most recent unit with human presence. Nearly 1300 small mammal rem...

The Miocene record of talpids and dimylids in south-western Europe is very scarce. In the present work, we study for the first time the talpids and complete the description of the dimylids, already started with a new species of the genus Plesiodimylus from the Ribesalbes–Alcora Basin (MN4, lower Aragonian, early Miocene) by Crespo et al. (2018). Th...

This work aims to provide additional information about the morphological variability of the Iberian subspecies of Alpine newt (Ichthyosaura alpestris cyreni), by the description of the find, for the first time, of an adult individual with spotted ventral region.

This special issue of Quaternary International is the result of the workshop based on researches from the Quaternary of Europe presented in the First International Meeting of Early-stage Researchers in Palaeontology (1 st IMERP) held in Alpuente (eastern Spain) in 2016. Giving the amount of assistants, the event was divided into five different work...

En España, el patrimonio paleontológico puede ser protegido aplicando figuras de la legislación medioambiental o de la cultural, dependiendo si es considerado como perteneciente al patrimonio natural o histórico, respectivamente. La naturaleza intrínseca de los fósiles (origen, naturaleza y localización) permite englobarlos como un elemento de la g...

The locality of El Salt (Middle Paleolithic, Alcoy, Spain) is mainly known by having one of the youngest Neanderthals records of the southeastern Iberian Peninsula. In this work, we have analysed the herpetofaunal fossils from the upper part of stratigraphic unit Xb, dated at 52.3 ± 4.6 ka (MIS 3). The faunal list is composed by three taxa of anura...

Nearly 250 small mammal remains from Unit Xb of El Salt Middle Palaeolithic site have been studied in order to reconstruct the palaeoecological conditions during a phase of Neanderthal occupation in this locality at 52.3 ± 4.6 ka. A total of 7rodents (Microtus arvalis, M. agrestis, M. (Terricola) duodecimcostatus, Microtus (Iberomys) cabrerae, Arvi...

Stenopelmus rufinasus Gyllenhal (Fig. 1) es un escarabajo de unos 2 mm de longitud, originario del sur y oeste de los Estados Unidos. Ha sido importado a Sudáfrica como biocontrolador de Azolla filiculoides Lam. (HILL, 1998, 1999; McCONNACHIE et al., 2004), mientras que en Europa probablemente se ha introducido debido a la migración de aves acuátic...

La Pedrera is a new palaeontological site located south of the province of Valencia, between the Betic and Iberian Ranges, in a cavity filled with sediments inside a tufa formation. Roughly 260 fossil remains, corresponding to 14 taxa, have been recovered and studied from Unit III. Six rodents (Microtus sp., M. sp. gr. M. (Terricola) duodecimcostat...

In this study we report on the helminth fauna of the invasive American red-eared slider Trachemys scripta in five localities from eastern Spain where this species co-occurs with two native, endangered freshwater turtles, i.e. Emys orbicularis and Mauremys leprosa. In total, 46 individuals of T. scripta were analysed for parasites. Adult individuals...

In Southern Europe, the invasive terrapin Trachemys scripta is known to produce a direct impact on the survival rates of the native terrapins Emys orbicularis and Mauremys leprosa through behavioral interactions. However, indirect parasite-mediated effects could also play a role in the invasive process but have still not been investigated. Trachemy...

The freshwater turtle Trachemys scripta is an invasive species that coexist in Spain with the native turtles Emys orbicularis and Mauremys leprosa, competing for basking sites and changing their behavior through chemical signals. Apart from these direct harmful effects, other indirect effects could be associated to the parasitic fauna of T. scripta...

With the significant increase of introduced species over recent decades, comprehensive taxonomic studies of their symbionts (commensal, parasites) have become necessary because symbionts can generate a substantial impact (even higher than that from their hosts) in the colonized ecosystems. In this study we report, for the first time in the Palaearc...