La grotte de l'Escale lower bed B, Saint-Esteve-Janson, Bouches du Rhone. (Pleistocene of France)

Also known as L'Escale

Where: Provence, France (43.7° N, 5.4° E: paleocoordinates 43.7° N, 5.4° E)

• coordinate based on nearby landmark

When: Middle Pleistocene (0.8 - 0.1 Ma)

• Middle Pleistocene (Biharian), roughly 0.8-0.7Ma.

•There are a number of beds within the cave - from A (lowermost)-L (topmost), not all of which contain fauna. Each faunal level has been entered separately.

Environment/lithology: cave

• Fauna comes from the lower part of bed B. Bed is described as a whole - it contains deteriorated (altere) browny-reddish fallen rocks, with reddish clayey silts. The whole bed is 1-2 metres thick.

Size classes: macrofossils, mesofossils

Collection methods: Specimens held in the Maison Mediterraneenne des Sciences de l'Homme (MMSH), Aix-en-Provence.

•Birds are mentioned but not listed.

Primary reference: M. F. Bonifay and E. Bonifay. 1963. Un gisement a faune epi-villafranchienne a Saint-Esteve-Janson (Bouches-du-Rhone). Comptes Rendue Academie des Sciences, Paris 246:1136-1138 [A. Turner/H. O'Regan/H. O'Regan]more details

Purpose of describing collection: archaeological analysis

PaleoDB collection 48912: authorized by Alan Turner, entered by Hannah O'Regan on 04.04.2005

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

• Fauna of lower bed B is indicative of a temperate and humid/wet environment.
Angiospermae
 Rosales - Ulmaceae
Celtis sp.2 Linnaeus 1753 hackberry
abundant.
Reptilia
  -
Reptilia indet.2 Laurenti 1768 reptile
large land tortoises.
Mammalia
 Artiodactyla - Cervidae
 Artiodactyla - Bovidae
 Carnivora - Felidae
 Carnivora - Hyaenidae
Pliocrocuta perrieri3 Kretzoi 1938 hyaena
 Carnivora - Ursidae
Ursus deningeri1 Reichenau 1904 bear
 Theriamorpha - Talpidae
Talpa cf. europaea1 Linnaeus 1758 European mole
 Lagomorpha - Leporidae
Leporidae indet.1 Fischer de Waldheim 1817 rabbit
present.
 Primates - Cercopithecidae
Macaca florentina2 Cocchi 1872 macaque