Senèze: Life in Central France Around Two Million Years Ago

The paleontological site of Senèze (Haute Loire, central France) was discovered in 1892 inside a volcanic crater. For over 40 years, local peasant Pierre Philis collected fossils and sold them to French and Swiss museums. The site became world-famous for its well-preserved skeletons of ungulates and carnivores, as well as rare but well-preserved remains of primates and other mammals. It is considered the reference fauna for the late Villafranchian and MNQ 18 biochronological units of European mammalian evolution, but the lack of provenance data made modern research difficult. From 2000-2006, the multidisciplinary Franco-American Senèze Research Project undertook five seasons of major fieldwork, with the goals of clarifying the age, stratigraphy and taphonomy of Senèze, as well as finding additional remains, especially of the less well-known taxa. In this volume, following a history of study and summary of the new fieldwork, four geological chapters consider field methods, stratigraphy, volcanology and dating. Combining argon-argon ages and paleomagnetic calibration, the newly recovered fossils are shown to date between 2.20 and 2.08 Ma, with concentrations ca. 2.20-2.18 and 2.10-2.08 Ma, significantly older than previously thought. Chapters on palynology, ichthyology and ornithology are followed by eight chapters on the fossil mammals. The chapter on biochronology places Senèze among other sites at the start of MNQ 18, which is estimated to end ca. 1.7 Ma. Of some 2200 specimens known from the site, over half are cervids, with bovids, rhinocerotids and equids far behind. According to data from palynology and the habitat preferences of the more common mammals, the paleoenvironment around the Senèze maar would have included forest, woodland and grassland, perhaps in a warmer and moister climate than today. Taphonomic studies revealed that bones often rested a long time under water, lacked any indication of carnivore attack and often displayed pathologies in their joints. It is likely that most of the associated skeletons were preserved undisturbed after large mammals fell into the paleolake and drowned without being able to climb out.

This book responds to the long-held desire of later Cenozoic paleontologists to see a modern study of a site recognized worldwide as a biochronologic reference for the Plio-Pleistocene. Our study required renewed fieldwork using up to date techniques of topography, sedimentology, stratigraphy, geochronology and taphonomy. The systematic paleontology chapters are based on re-study of the entire body of Senèze fossils collected during more than a century of research. The volume will be of interest to paleontologists, especially those concerned with the evolution of the European fauna and with the taxa studied, as well as with paleoenvironmental reconstruction and biogeography. It will also be of value to mammalogists interested in analyses of near-modern taxa and to paleoanthropologists, archaeologists and taphonomists interested in the methods utilized and the role of Senèze as a comparative standard for a site of this age without human intervention. It will surely be an essential reference for all those who want to know more about Life in Central France Around Two Million Years Ago.