Today, at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre Evolución Humana (CENIEH), Abel Moclán passed the viva voce for his thesis on the management of animal resources among Middle Paleolithic groups in the Iberian Peninsula. The research was supervised by Manuel Santonja (CENIEH), Manuel Domínguez (UCM) and Rosa Huguet (IPHES).

This thesis contains a diachronic study of the faunal assemblages at Iberian Peninsula sites with Middle Paleolithic technology, with the aim of characterizing the hunting and animal resource usage strategies of these groups. The methodology was a zooarchaeological, taphonomic and spatial analysis of the sites of Ambrona (Soria), Cuesta de la Bajada (Teruel) and Navalmaíllo Rock Shelter (Madrid). 

Comparison of the data gleaned from these sites with other assemblages in the Peninsula made it possible to show that the hunting strategies of Early Middle Paleolithic groups were virtually identical to those of the last Neanderthals. Nonetheless, certain differences between the behavior of the groups were detected, according to whether they could avail of pyrotechnology (the use and control of fire).

The jury, chaired by Palmira Saladié Ballesté, of the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES), and also made up of Eduardo Méndez Quintas, of the Universidad de Vigo; Susana Rubio Jara, of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Enrique Baquedano Pérez, of the Museo Arqueológico y Paleontológico of the Madrid Regional Government, and Lucía Cobo Sánchez, of the University of Algarve, have awarded the new Universidad de Burgos doctor the mark of 'cum laude'.