Human-Mammal Interactions: Evolutionary Dynamics from the Pleistocene to the Holocene

Human societies have repeatedly adapted to changing mammalian communities throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene. Climatic shifts, habitat turnover, sea-level change, fire, hunting, herding, and domestication reshaped the availability, role, and meaning of mammal resources. By integrating faunal assemblages with paleoenvironmental evidence, biomolecular data, modelling approaches, and technological evidence of past human practices, this topic explores long-term human–mammal relationships across the Quaternary. It examines how people encountered, used, managed, and transformed mammalian ecosystems, from foraging and hunting to herding and domestication. In doing so, it highlights how mammal remains can illuminate both environmental change and the cultural, economic, and technological strategies through which human groups responded to shifting landscapes and animal communities worldwide.The goal is to build an interdisciplinary collection that places mammals at the center of debates on human adaptation in dynamic Quaternary landscapes. We aim to clarify how mammalian community structure and behavior influenced human settlement, diet, mobility, technology and social practice, and how human activities affected mammal abundance, distribution and survival. Contributors will compare mechanisms of resilience, vulnerability, niche construction, domestication and extinction across regions and environments.We invite Original Research, Reviews, Methods, Mini Reviews, Perspectives and Data Reports. Themes may include zooarchaeology, taphonomy, stable isotopes, ancient DNA, proteomics, paleoecology, dating, modelling, dental microwear, morphometrics and conservation-relevant paleobiology. Submissions should foreground mammals and may address hunting, scavenging, commensalism, pastoralism, megafaunal decline, species translocation, landscape use, technological change or human impacts on mammal communities from the Pleistocene to the Holocene. Topic editors: Vidal-Cordasco, M., Leopoldo Pérez Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83981/human-mammal-interactions-evolutionary-dynamics-from-the-pleistocene-to-the-holocene