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

维拉弗兰契亚期是欧洲的一个时间间隔，以生活在大约350万至150万年前的哺乳动物为基础，这个时间间隔见证了人类和动物进化的重要事件。尽管这一概念在近150年前首次被提出，但关于单位和亚单位边界的时间仍然存在不确定性。PI将试图通过重新分析法国中部塞内泽的火山火山口湖（maar）——维拉弗兰奇晚期主要的哺乳动物聚集地之一，来澄清这一情况。60年来，Seneze没有进行过重大的古生物收集，而自1960年以来的地层和年代研究得出了相互矛盾的结果。既不知道生产地点的精确位置，也不知道谁控制着它们的进入，而且可能有不止一个化石层。团队的工作将涉及三种互补的方法：1)澄清这个复杂遗址的当地地质；2)综合利用遗址及其动物群的年代测定方法；3)在修正和定年的地层中从已知点收集哺乳动物化石。这项研究可能会产生新的重要哺乳动物标本，如陆生灵长类副猿。本申请书要求拨款于2000年6月进行为期一周的考察访问。如果成功的话，将在2001年尝试一个地层-地质年代学季节，并计划在2002年和2003年全面收集化石。

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