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Population models seeking climate as a triggering factor for the extinction of Neandertals and the colonisation of Europe by Anatomically Modern Humans are contradictory due to uncertainties in the dating methods, in the cultural attribution of archaeological layers and to the lack of terrestrial continuous and well-dated palaeoclimatic sequences. This is particularly the case for the Iberian Peninsula where Neandertal populations seem to have survived later than in other regions of Europe. A review of the available palaeoclimatic evidence for OIS3 of Iberia reveals that this mainly consists of low resolution, fragmentary, ill-dated and often ill-interpreted records. Correlation between palaeoenvironmental sequences from two IMAGES pollen-rich deep sea cores and archaeological data from western Europe (the electronic archive of the radiocarbon dates is available at QSR website http://www.elsevier.nl/locate …