Geophysical Research Abstracts,
Vol. 10, EGU2008-A-07018, 2008
SRef-ID: 1607-7962/gra/EGU2008-A-07018
EGU General Assembly 2008
© Author(s) 2008
Paleogeography of Late Oligocene to Miocene rodent
assemblages from the western Dinaride-Anatolian
Land
W. Wessels (1), Z. Markovi´ c (2), H. de Bruijn (1), G. Daxner-Höck (3), O. Mandic
(3) and E. Šiši´ c (4)
(1) Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, (2) Natural History Museum,
Belgrade, Serbia, (3) Paleontological-Geological Department Natural History Museum,
Vienna, Austria, (4) RMU "Banovi´ ci", Banovi´ ci, Bosnia and Herzegovina
(wessels@geo.uu.nl)
The northward movement of the African plate during the Oligocene induced uplift and
subsequent erosion of the Dinaride landmass and infill of the SW part of the Paratethys
basin, bounded by the Mediterranean Tethys in the southwest and the Paratethys sea
in the northeast. The new land was soon occupied by an extensive lacustrine system
which lasted in its western part into the Middle Miocene. Integrated stratigraphical
investigations of that Miocene Dinaride lake system initiated investigations of rodent
faunas for improving the correlation and providing insight in the paleogeographic pro-
cesses. Despite the extensive record of Early Miocene Rodentia from South-western
Europe and the eastern Mediterranean area the exchange of faunal elements between
these areas is poorly documented.
Investigation of the coal bearing deposits in Bosnia and Herzegovina preserved near
Ugljevik and Banovi´ ci yielded new small assemblages which could be biostratigraph-
ically dated. The assemblage from Ugljevik resembles the Late Oligocene ones from
Thrace and Anatolia (Ünay, 1989; Ünay et al., 2003) in sharing the same species
of Eomys (Thrace), a ctenodactyloid (Anatolia) and a Bransatoglis that is similar to
those from both areas. At the same time the dominant cricitid in Ugljevik seems to
be ancestral to Enginia, which is so far known from coal bearing deposits in Anato-