A large-scale study of fossil human teeth from Ice Age Europe shows that climate change significantly influenced the demography of prehistoric humans.

Using the largest dataset of human fossils from Ice Age Europe to date, an international research team shows how prehistoric hunter–gatherers coped with climate change in the period between 47,000 and 7,000 years ago.

Population sizes declined sharply during the coldest period, and in the West, Ice Age Europeans even faced extinction, according to the study published August 16 in the journal Science Advances.