Towards a late Middle Pleistocene non-marine molluscan biostratigraphy for the British Isles

Abstract

The fossils of non-marine Mollusca are among the most prominent in Pleistocene deposits. They were one of the first fossil groups to be noted in the literature, as early as the beginning of the 18th century. With the stabilisation of taxonomies in the 19th century numerous publications appeared with faunal lists of interglacial taxa, but few attempts were made to use the data for interpretation. Work from 1950 onwards, especially by Sparks and Kerney in Britain, Puisségur in France, and by Ložek in Central Europe, used a quantitative approach to sorting, counting and interpreting assemblages. Despite the adoption of this rigorous methodology to molluscan studies, interglacial faunas were used primarily to reconstruct past environments, and although faunal changes through the Pleistocene were recognised, it was thought that non-marine Mollusca were inherently badly fitted for use as tools for dating in the classic geological sense. Recent work, coupled with the re-evaluation of sites described in the literature, has allowed non-marine molluscan faunas to be used as biostratigraphic indicators. Biostratigraphic schemes evolved from this work are comparable with parallel investigations using Mammalia, Coleoptera and lithostratigraphy calibrated by a number of geochronometric methods, but may be at variance with pollen biostratigraphies.