Programme des sessions > Recherche par auteur correspondant > Métais Grégoire

The fossil record of early Paleogene mammal evolution in Western Europe has steadily improved over the last decades. The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, ~56 Ma) and the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum (EECO, ~50-52 Ma) particularly have attracted much attention because they allow to highlight the biotic response to hyperthermal events. The pattern of mammalian turnover during that Thanetian-Ypresian interval is reasonably well documented in the Paris Basin with different fossil localities, some of them forming the framework of the MP (Mammal Paleogene) biochronological system used in Europe for the Paleogene. The constantly growing paleontological data (both geographically and chronologically) will adjust this biochronological system so that it can also serve for inter-continental correlations, which will be reinforced by unmatched chronostratigraphic tools such as chemostratigraphy.

Here we provide new paleontological data from the Paris Basin for two stratigraphic / time intervals: the late Thanetian and the Cuisian (mid-late Ypresian). A new faunule of terrestrial mammals from the base of the Sables de Bourguillemont unit immediately overlying the Bracheux sands has yielded typically Paleocene taxa associated with taxa known to first appeared in Europe at MP6b and MP7. The age of that locality is also discussed in frame of sedimentary cycles and local topography of the Oise area near the Paleocene-Eocene transition. For the second interval, new investigations in two MP10 fossil localities, Mancy and Monthelon, have produced new paleontological data which better document several taxa defining the MP10 reference level. Finally, an attempt of chemotratigraphic correlation for these two investigated sections, Mancy and Monthelon, is proposed.