With support from the US National Science Foundation, Dr. Jonathan Haws (University of Louisville) and Dr. Michael Benedetti (University of North Carolina Wilmington) lead a long-term study of Neanderthal extinction and replacement by anatomically modern humans. The project brings together an international team to recover high-resolution archaeological, geological and paleoecological records from the excavation of Lapa do Picareiro, a cave in central Portugal. The project is designed to test whether or not differences in land use and diet allowed Neanderthals to survive in southwestern Europe longer than anywhere else. The ultimate goal is to determine why Neanderthals went extinct and were replaced by modern humans. Lapa do Picareiro is a unique site, with about 10m of sediments spanning over 60,000 years. The sequence includes almost 2m of intact deposits dated between 45-35,000 years ago, making it an ideal place to track changes in paleoenvironments and human ecodynamics during the critical period of Neanderthal extinction and modern human colonization of Europe. Our methodology uses radiocarbon dating to establish age control, stone tool analyses to understand the decision-making of Paleolithic humans, animal bone assemblages to reconstruct paleoenvironments and understand Neanderthal and modern human diets, and sedimentological analyses to infer site formation processes and environmental context of human occupation. Taken together, the is establishing a complete paleoenvironmental and geoarchaeological chronology for the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition at Lapa do Picareiro, providing critical context that is missing from many other sites in the region.