Where: South Africa (28.8° S, 26.1° E: paleocoordinates 28.8° S, 26.1° E)

• coordinate stated in text

When: Middle Pleistocene to Middle Pleistocene (0.8 - 0.0 Ma)

• A certain degree of temporal mixing in the fossil specimens from spring contexts was predicted. When large mammal specimens from the spring assemblage were tested with electron spin resonance (ESR), the ESR age estimates gave temporal clusters in accordance with the prediction ranging between 100,000 and 400,000 years (Grün et al. 1996). The bird remains described here derive from the spring, and it may be assumed then that their presence equally reflects natural spring processes and that their geological age would similarly be in the range of 100,000 to 400,000 years, i.e., late Middle Pleistocene or earliest Late Pleistocene.

• bed-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: spring; lithified siliciclastic sediments

Size class: macrofossils

Collection methods: Repository: Florisbad Quaternary Research Station of the National Museum, Bloemfontein. The prefix "FLO" indicates that the specimens belong to the "Old Collection," i.e., they were collected during the two main phases of excavation in the first half of the previous century. The first phase of excavation occurred in the late 1920s and in 1932, when T.F. Dreyer excavated at the site (Dreyer and Lyle 1931; Dreyer 1938). The second phase of collecting was in 1952, when A.C. Hoffman conducted a short season of excavation (Hoffman 1955). Both phases of excavation focused on the spring, and the second phase was essentially an extension of the first.

Primary reference: A. Manegold and J. S. Brink. 2011. Descriptions and palaeoecological implications of bird remains from the Middle Pleistocene of Florisbad, South Africa. Paläontologische Zeitschrift 85:19-32 [M. Clapham/M. Clapham/M. Clapham]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 198625: authorized by Matthew Clapham, entered by Matthew Clapham on 29.12.2018

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)