Recurrent humid phases in Arabia over the past 8 million years
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Vonhof, Hubert B
Groucutt, Huw S
Breeze, Paul S
Drake, Nick
Stewart, Mathew
Albert, Richard
Andrieux, Eric
Blinkhorn, James
Boivin, Nicole
Budsky, Alexander
Clark-Wilson, Richard
Fleitmann, Dominik
Gerdes, Axel
Martin, Ashley N
et al.
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The Saharo-Arabian Desert is one of the largest biogeographical barriers on Earth, impeding dispersals between Africa and Eurasia, including movements of past hominins. Recent research suggests that this barrier has been in place since at least 11 million years ago1. In contrast, fossil evidence from the late Miocene epoch and the Pleistocene epoch suggests the episodic presence within the Saharo-Arabian Desert interior of water-dependent fauna (for example, crocodiles, equids, hippopotamids and proboscideans)2,3,4,5,6, sustained by rivers and lakes7,8 that are largely absent from today’s arid landscape. Although numerous humid phases occurred in southern Arabia during the past 1.1 million years9, little is known about Arabia’s palaeoclimate before this time. Here, based on a climatic record from desert speleothems, we show recurrent humid intervals in the central Arabian interior over the past 8 million years. Precipitation during humid intervals decreased and became more variable over time, as the monsoon’s influence weakened, coinciding with enhanced Northern Hemisphere polar ice cover during the Pleistocene. Wetter conditions likely facilitated mammalian dispersals between Africa and Eurasia, with Arabia acting as a key crossroads for continental-scale biogeographic exchanges.
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Nature
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640
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8060
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© The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Markowska, M; Vonhof, HB; Groucutt, HS; Breeze, PS; Drake, N; Stewart, M; Albert, R; Andrieux, E; Blinkhorn, J; Boivin, N; Budsky, A; Clark-Wilson, R; Fleitmann, D; Gerdes, A; Martin, AN; Martinez-Garcia, A; Nicholson, SL; Price, GJ; Scerri, EML; Scholz, D; Vanwezer, N; Weber, M; Alsharekh, AM; Al Omari, AA; Al-Mufarreh, YSA; Al-Jibreen, F; Alqahtani, M; Al-Shanti, M; Zalmout, I; Petraglia, MD; Haug, GH, Recurrent humid phases in Arabia over the past 8 million years, Nature, 2025, 640 (8060), pp. 954-961