State of the art: Mammal Biostratigraphy for the East Carpathian Foreland (Eastern Romania, Republic of Moldova and Western Ukraine)

Abstract

The East Carpathian Foreland (ECF) provides one of the key Late Miocene mammal records of SE Europe and has great potential as a link between Asian and European mammal faunas for the Late Serravalian (Middle Miocene) up to Gelasian (Early Pleistocene) stages. Due to improved access to the local literature as a result of international cooperation and advances in Paratethys magnetostratigraphic study and isotopic dating over the past 10 years there is currently a high potential to create a local mammal biozonation that can be compared with European, Mediterranean and Asian records. In this thesis a detailed overview is provided of mammal occurrences over many of the known localities of the ECF and their occurrences are ordered into a provisional biostratigraphic scheme which will be compared to both European and Asian biostratigraphy in order to discern potential differences. This scheme enables us to test the current coherency in the reported mammal faunas and the attributed ages and allows us to identify how and where improvements can be made. Our inventory of the current mammal record is fundamental for future mammal biostratigraphic research in the ECF and is hugely beneficial to ongoing research into the East Carpathian Foreland depositional system.