Everything is a question of time – age of important Quaternary palaeontological finds from Westphalia

Abstract

Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) was used to establish the age of three mammal specimens from the Quaternary of the Münsterland, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The dated samples represent regionally important finds: The woolly mammoth from Ahlen with an age of 41 ka BP and the musk-ox from Herne with an age of 24 ka BP are typical representatives of the so-called mammoth steppe. The European Bison from Gladbeck with an age of 9.2 ka BP confirms the Early Holocene appearance of this species in Europe.