High Risk Exploratory Research: Biogeochronology of the European Villafranchian--reanalysis of the Seneze site, central France

Research Foundation Of The City University Of New York (Lehman), Bronx NY

Investigators

Abstract

The Villafranchian is a European time interval based on the mammals which lived from roughly 3.5-1.5 million years ago, an interval which saw important events in human and faunal evolution. Although this concept was first proposed nearly 150 years ago, there is still uncertainty as to the timing of the unit and subunit boundaries. The PI's will attempt to clarify the situation through reanalysis of one of the major late Villafranchian mammalian localities, the volcanic explosion-crater lake (maar) of Seneze, in central France. No major paleontological collection has been undertaken at Seneze in 60 years, while stratigraphic and dating studies since 1960 have yielded conflicting results. Neither the precise location of productive findspots nor who controls access to them is known, and there may be more than one fossil-bearing horizon. The team effort will involve three complementary approaches: 1) to clarify the local geology of this complex site; 2) to utilize a combination of dating methods on the site and its fauna; and 3) to collect mammalian fossils from known points within the revised and dated stratigraphy. New specimens of important mammals such as the terrestrial primate Paradolichopithecus may result from this study. This application requests funds for a one-week exploratory visit in June 2000. If that is successful, a stratigraphic-geochronological season will be attempted in 2001, with full-scale collecting of fossils planned for 2002 and 2003.