Paul Botté, Alexis Licht, Anne-Lise Jourdan, Leny Montheil, François Demory, Mustafa Kaya, Faruk Ocakoğlu, Mehmet Serkan Akkiraz, Deniz İbilioğlu, Pauline Coster, Grégoire Métais, Benjamin Raynaud, and K. Christopher Beard
The Eocene–Oligocene Transition (EOT; ~34 Ma) marks a major global cooling that transformed terrestrial ecosystems and influenced mammalian dispersals. A continental record from Anatolia reveals a Late Eocene warming followed by abrupt cooling at the EOT, documented by geochemistry and sedimentology. This interval is also characterized by increasing aridity, which likely contributed to the decline of endemic taxa and facilitated the westward expansion of Asian mammals into western Europe.