The earliest Middle Palaeolithic sites are dated to the transitory period between the Riss and Würm glacial periods around 100,000 years ago. Remains of skulls show that Neanderthals inhabited northeastern Transdanubia and the Bükk Mountains during this period. The Neanderthals who lived in the region of Érd between around 100,000 and 40,000 BC used quartzite pebbles. They led hunting expeditions as far as the Gerecse Hills for cave bears, wild horses, woolly rhinos and other animals. A Neanderthal community settled near the hot-water springs at Tata around 50,000 BC. They hunted mammoth calves, brown bear, wild horses and reed deer. A flat oval object made from mammoth tooth lamella, similar to the Indigenous Australians' ritual "tjurunga", was found at the site. A third group of Neanderthals settled in the caves of the Pilis, Vértes and Gerecse Hills. They regularly visited the Bükk Mountains and the White Carpathians to collect raw material for their tools. Ibex was the main prey of the Neanderthals of the Middle Palaeolothic sites in the Bükk Mountains. In addition to local stone, they used raw material from the White Carpathians and the region of the river Prut. Archaeological research suggest that the Neanderthals disappeared from the northern regions of the Carpathian Basin around 40,000 years ago.