The small mammals from the upper Miocene of the Teruel-Alfambra region (Spain): paleobiology and paleoclimatic reconstructions

Abstract

The main aim of this thesis is to unravel in greatest possible detail trends and events in fauna, environment and climate in NE Spain during the late Miocene (Vallesian and Turolian). The Teruel-Alfambra region in the Teruel basin has been chosen as the study area, because earlier studies in the 1960s and 1970s had already provided a firm taxonomic and biostratigraphic framework. In order to further increase the small mammal faunal resolution in the area, several field campaigns have been organized during the 1990s in close collaboration with colleagues from Complutense University and the National Museum of Natural Sciences, Madrid. This has [mally resulted in a total number of 89 upper Miocene fossil localities, i.e. almost twice as much as were known before. The majority of the localities have been found in stratigraphic superposition in the field. In the course of the study, various key sections have been sampled for magnetostratigraphic analysis. The combination of the polarity patterns in the Teruel and in other Spanish basins allows the correlation of the studied small mammal succession to the Geomagnetic Polarity Time Scale (GPTS).