Mammifères de Sansan

About this book

Language: French with a bilingual foreword in English and French. All chapters have a short bilingual summary in English and French, and an extended English abstract.

Sansan (Gers, France) is a unique site of Middle Miocene age (ca. 15 Ma), and a hot spot of the biodiversity of its time. Since its discovery in 1834, tens of thousands of fossils were unearthed, documenting nearly 200 plant and animal species, whose, for many of them, it is the reference locality. This richness and diversity have earned Sansan to be chosen as the reference locality of the zone MN 6 (Middle Miocene) of the mammalian biochronology timescale, a scientific recognition extending far beyond the borders of our continent. Since the monograph of Edouard Lartet in 1851, the fossils from Sansan, especially mammals, have been widely studied and used as comparative material for the determination of fossils found in Europe and elsewhere. The interest of paleontologists for the Sansan fauna and the evolution of ideas about the systematics and phylogeny of extant and fossil vertebrates have made it essential to update the knowledge on the fauna of this site.

Initiated some twenty years ago by Léonard Ginsburg, the comprehensive review of the fauna and flora of Sansan led to the publication in 2000, of a first volume presenting the history, geology, flora, invertebrates and non-mammalian vertebrates of this site, This second volume presents the first revision of the mammalian fauna from Sansan since the Henri Filhol's monograph in 1890. The 16 chapters that compose this memoir offer an updated description and a detailed review of the vast majority of the 80 species that are known at Sansan (Chiroptera, Rodentia, Artiodactyla, Perissodactyla, Carnivora, Primates), and a paleoecological analysis of the fauna.

Included in the back of the book is a CD-ROM containing PDF versions of all the chapters.

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