Quaternary Birds of the Planet of First, Ancient and Modern Humans
A special issue of Quaternary (ISSN 2571-550X).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 10 December 2025 | Viewed by 965
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to announce an upcoming Special Issue of Quaternary that will focus on the birds of the Quaternary period.
The Quaternary is the latest, shortest, and most dramatic period in the history of life on our planet. It has lasted only 2,580,000 years, but almost all areas of the Earth’s natural environment are unrecognizable. Nature acquired its modern appearance, including the outlines of continents and the distribution of biomes. However, the most serious impacts on nature can be traced back to the appearance of Homo sapiens approximately 200,000 years ago. This was when the multifaceted interactions comprising coexistence between humans and birds began.
This Special Issue is dedicated to the birds that circled above the heads of mammoths, ground sloths, and marsupial lions, the birds on which our entire modern poultry farming is based, and birds’ incredibly diverse utilitarian aspects and importance in not only the material existence but also the spiritual life of ancient people. The scope of this Special Issue is very broad and thematically allows for the consideration of extremely interesting aspects of the life and distribution of modern birds and their immediate predecessors.
Over the last 500 years, unfortunately, a new group of birds has had to be defined, i.e., the list of birds extinct due to human activity, which is unfortunately continuing to grow. In 2024, we added the slender-billed curlew to this list. All these birds also fall within the scope of the publication.
Papers on any of the aforementioned topics are invited for this Special Issue. Besides studies on specific species, we also encourage larger-scale studies enabling the comparison of different avifaunas from different regions or time periods, as well as those on the importance of birds to people in the past.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Quaternary bird diversity;
- Quaternary bird extinction;
- Human uses of birds in the past;
- Birds in prehistoric art;
- Birds as a material resource;
- Changes in the range of Quaternary birds;
- The earliest domestication of birds;
- Human impacts on the distribution of birds in the past.
Prof. Dr. Zlatozar Boev
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Quaternary is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- diversity
- extinction
- utilization
- art
- resource
- ranges
- domestication
- decline
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