Homo from Africa to Europe: terrestrial ecosystems evolution and dispersal routes

This special issue of Quaternary International publishes part of the proceedings of the homonymous thematic session at the FIST Geoitalia 2009 Congress, held at Rimini (Italy) on September-102009. The timing and the dispersal routes of the first humans peopling Europe during the Early Pleistocene are matters of an ongoing wide international debate (Dennell and Roebroeks, 2005; Martínez-Navarro, 2010; O'Regan et al., 2011, among the others). The Mediterranean region is a crucial area for this purpose, and the sites of the Italian peninsula provide important evidence for the stratigraphical, paleoenvironmental and biochronological data for the Early Pleistocene. Nine papers on a wide range of research topics (regional geology, paleogeography, prehistoric archaeology and palaeontology) are collected within this volume.