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

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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.