Small Grant for Exploratory Research: Biogeochronology of the Villafranchian Site of Seneze, Central France

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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, ranging between 2.2-1.5 Ma. As the earliest human tools in Europe proper (Spain) and human fossils with tools at the margins of Europe (Israel, Georgia) occur close to this time range, the fauna from Seneze is often used as a standard for comparison to determine the age of such early human presence. The team effort has three complementary goals: 1) to clarify the local geology of this complex site; 2) to utilize a combination of dating methods (ESR, Ar-Ar and paleomagnetic correlation) 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 four-week geological and age-dating season in June-July 2001. If that is successful, full-scale collecting of fossils is planned for 2002-2004.