Where: Reunion (21.1° S, 55.2° E: paleocoordinates 21.1° S, 55.2° E)

• coordinate based on nearby landmark

• outcrop-level geographic resolution

When: Holocene (0.0 - 0.0 Ma)

• The filling of the swamp consists of about 80 cm of organic soil with very few fossils. This overlies a layer 30 to 40 cm deep made up of countless bones and shell fragments of the large, extinct land-tortoise Cylindraspis borbonica Bour, mixed with volcanic rocks and blocks of coral. Several bones of Cylindraspis borbonica dated at 915 +/- 120 BP (after calibration 883-1273 AD); a bone of C. borbonica from the base of the sediment dated at 1755 +/- 40 BP (after calibration 186-391 AD); and a pig bone, introduced by humans, dated at 365 +/- 35 BY (after calibration 1458-1633 AD). The three dates obtained for the Marais de l'Ermitage indicate that the remains of tortoises, birds, and bats accumulated over a period of at least 1400 years, from about 300 AD to about 1700 AD.

• bed-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: mire or swamp; peat

Size class: macrofossils

Collected in 1989-

Collection methods: sieve

• Repository: Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, Saint-Denis, La Reunion

Primary reference: C. Mourer-Chauviré, R. Bour, S. Ribes and F. Moutou. 1999. The avifauna of Réunion Island (Mascarene Islands) at the time of the arrival of the first Europeans. Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology 89:1-38 [M. Clapham/M. Clapham/M. Clapham]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 193996: authorized by Matthew Clapham, entered by Matthew Clapham on 10.06.2018

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)