Lithostratigraphic and magnetostratigraphic data from late Cenozoic glacial and proglacial sequences underlying the Altiplano at La Paz, Bolivia.

We provide lithostratigraphic and magnetostratigraphic data derived from a Plio-Pleistocene continental sediment sequence underlying the Altiplano plateau at La Paz, Bolivia. The record comprises six sections along the upper Río La Paz valley, totaling over one kilometre of exposure and forming a ~20-km transect oblique to the adjacent Cordillera Real. Lithostratigraphic characterization includes lithologic and stratigraphic descriptions of units and their contacts.

Multiple tropical Andean glaciations during a period of late Pliocene warmth.

The extent and behaviour of glaciers during the mid-Piacenzian warm period illustrate the sensitivity of the cryosphere to atmospheric CO concentrations above pre-industrial levels. Knowledge of glaciation during this period is restricted to globally or regionally averaged records from marine sediments and to sparse terrestrial glacial deposits in mid-to-high latitudes. Here we expand the Pliocene glacial record to the tropics by reporting recurrent large-scale glaciation in the Bolivian Andes based on stratigraphic and paleomagnetic analysis of a 95-m sequence of glacial sediments underlying the 2.

The earliest record of human activity in northern Europe.

The colonization of Eurasia by early humans is a key event after their spread out of Africa, but the nature, timing and ecological context of the earliest human occupation of northwest Europe is uncertain and has been the subject of intense debate. The southern Caucasus was occupied about 1.8 million years (Myr) ago, whereas human remains from Atapuerca-TD6, Spain (more than 780 kyr ago) and Ceprano, Italy (about 800 kyr ago) show that early Homo had dispersed to the Mediterranean hinterland before the Brunhes-Matuyama magnetic polarity reversal (780 kyr ago).