Small mammal assemblages from the Quaternary succession at Moriaanshoofd (Zeeland, the Netherlands) and their significance for correlating the Oosterschelde fauna

Abstract

We investigated fossil small mammals from a borehole near Moriaanshoofd (Zeeland, southwest Netherlands) in order to get better insights in the fossil mammal faunas that are found in the subsurface in the southwestern Netherlands, and to investigate the age and provenance of the mammal fauna that is being dredged from the deep tidal gullies in the nearby Oosterschelde estuary. The record in the borehole covers Gelasian (Early Pleistocene) to Holocene deposits, represented by six formations. Thirty-nine specimens of small mammals were obtained from the borehole. These fossils derived from the Early Pleistocene marine Maassluis Formation and from directly overlying deposits of a Late Pleistocene age. During Weichselian times (33-24 ka), a proto-Schelde River shaped the northern Oosterschelde area. The river reworked substantial amounts of Early and Middle Pleistocene deposits. At the base of the Schelde-derived fluvial sequence (regionally described as the Koewacht Formation), Gelasian vertebrate faunas were concentrated in the channel lag. The Late Pleistocene channel lag is almost certainly the main source for the rich Early Pleistocene vertebrate faunas with larger mammals dredged from the Oosterschelde.

North Sea palaeogeographical reconstructions for the last 1 Ma

“…Preserved records of small rodents and freshwater molluscs are useful in providing time frames for these units, also in fluvially and marine reworked contexts (e.g. Mayhew et al, 2014). The bones of birds, fish and amphibians are important palaeoenvironmental indicators too (e.g.…”

A specimen of Canis cf. C. etruscus (Mammalia, Carnivora) from the Middle Villafranchian of the Oosterschelde

“…The Oosterschelde (also known in literature as Eastern Scheldt) is a dammed-off estuary located in the province of Zeeland (the Netherlands) where fossiliferous submarine sediments have been dredged since the 1950s (De Vos et al, 1998; Scager, 2015). The faunal content of the mammalian thanatocoenosis was published by (among others) De Vos et al (1998) and is now considered to date to the Early Pleistocene, MN17b sensu Palombo & Valli, 2003–2004; MNR2 sensu Mayhew et al, 2014, c. 2.35 – 2.10 Ma (see Scager, 2015). These fossils were subsequently resedimented in a Late Pleistocene channel lag deposited by the proto-Schelde (Slupik et al, 2013) and are a rare example of a reworked and ex situ faunule that is nonetheless considered as a faunistic entity.…”

Spatial and temporal patterns of species replacement in the Middle Pleistocene: а case study of Мicrotus nivaloides Major, 1902 and morphologically related species of the Northern Black Sea and Azov areas

“…This characteristic is common to Terricola (Gromov and Poliakov, 1977), as well as to M. (Hyrcanicola) schelkovnikovi (Satunin, 1907) (Nadachowski, 2007). Hence, there is a certain doubt concerning which vole species the Middle Pleistocene findings of M2 and M1 with a supplementary loop (Nadachowski, 1985; Kolfschoten and Turner, 1996; Mayhew et al ., 2014) belong to. Furthermore, there is a temporal variation of the characteristic: the early representatives of M. agrestis evidently had a very low percentage (below 0.5%) of M2 with a fully developed supplementary loop (Nadachowski, 1985).…”