West-european malacofauna from loess deposits of the Weichselian Upper Pleniglacial : Compilation and preliminary analysis of the database

Terrestrial molluscs are useful organisms for the reconstruction of glacial palaeoenvironments thanks to their high ecological sensitivity and to their richness in loess deposits. A database of molluscan records has thus been compiled from Weichselian Upper Pleniglacial loess deposits for the wester...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Quaternaire
Main Author: Moine, Olivier
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:French
Published: Association française pour l’étude du quaternaire 2005
Subjects:
Ice
Online Access:http://journals.openedition.org/quaternaire/1532
Description
Summary:Terrestrial molluscs are useful organisms for the reconstruction of glacial palaeoenvironments thanks to their high ecological sensitivity and to their richness in loess deposits. A database of molluscan records has thus been compiled from Weichselian Upper Pleniglacial loess deposits for the western side of the European Great Plain to complement periglacial data and to alleviate the lack of both pollen and other biological proxy records. For each site, the sample age has been checked precisely. The composition of the database reveals an under-exploited potential of terrestrial molluscs as a palaeoenvironmental proxy. The composition of the malacofauna allowed the discrimination of a homogeneous cold, humid and poorly vegetated domain around the Channel and in Belgium, associated with ice-rich permafrost, opposed to a heterogeneous and more vegetated domain, located in Germany, associated with ice-poor permafrost. The analysis of new molluscan records at high resolution is now required to define precisely environmental domains, to study the evolution of their distributions through time and to provide millennial timescale environmental reconstructions for the loess domain of the European Great Plain. Les mollusques terrestres sont des organismes utiles dans la reconstitution des paléoenvironnements glaciaires grâce à leur forte sensibilité écologique et à leur richesse dans les dépôts de lœss. Une banque d’assemblages malacologiques a donc été compilée pour les dépôts lœssiques du Pléniglaciaire supérieur weichselien de la partie ouest de la Grande Plaine européenne pour compléter les données périglaciaires disponibles et pallier le manque d’enregistrements polliniques ainsi que d’autres indicateurs paléoenvironnementaux biologiques. Pour chaque site, l’âge des échantillons a été vérifié précisément. La composition de la banque de données révèle un potentiel sous-exploité de la malacofaune terrestre en tant qu’indicateur paléoenvironnemental. La composition des assemblages a permis la distinction d’un domaine ...