Dick Mol

• Research Associate at Natuurhistorisch Museum - Rotterdam

The genomic study of specimens dating to the Early and Middle Pleistocene (EP and MP), a period spanning from 2.6 million years ago (Ma) to 126 thousand years ago (ka), has the potential to elucidate the evolutionary processes that shaped present-day biodiversity. Obtaining genomic data from this period is challenging, but mitochondrial DNA, given...

The woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius (Blumenbach, 1799), may well be the best-studied extinct animal to date. Great advancements in mammoth evolution, behavior, and ecology have been made by studying their tusks and teeth. However, skulls remain underutilized, because of: a) the rarity of well-preserved skulls b) the difficulty of studying suc...

Historically, the extensive involvement of citizen scientists in palaeontology and archaeology has resulted in many discoveries and insights. More recently, machine learning has emerged as a broadly applicable tool for analysing large datasets of fossils and artefacts. In the digital age, citizen science (CS) and machine learning (ML) prove to be m...

De Sirenia, ofwel de zeekoeien, danken hun wetenschappelijke naam aan de verwarring door (waarschijnlijk) beschonken en eenzame zeelieden met de mythische zeemeerminnen. Deze waarnemingen werden gedaan tijdens verre reizen naar warme oorden. Hadden deze reizen in het Oligoceen (zo'n 30 miljoen jaar geleden) plaatsgevonden, dan hoefde men geen grote...

Woolly mammoths and mosasaurs side-by-side in the Saint Peters mountain, Maastricht. During excavation and subsequent preparation at the Science Lab of the Natuurhistorisch Museum Maastricht, a number of fossils were recovered amongst the skeletal remains of a late Maastrichtian (Late Cretaceous) mosasaurid reptile that can only have made their w...

Three hundred forty‐one radiocarbon dates from the Groningen radiocarbon database are compiled in this study. They show for the first time that organic sediment samples from the eastern Netherlands and mammal bones from Doggerland reflect shifts in the presence and the density of vegetation (food for herbivores) and mammal biomass during the last i...

Hormones in biological media reveal endocrine activity related to development, reproduction, disease and stress on different timescales¹. Serum provides immediate circulating concentrations², whereas various tissues record steroid hormones accumulated over time3,4. Hormones have been studied in keratin, bones and teeth in modern5–8 and ancient cont...

This short paper reports on the discovery of two lithic artefacts and some faunal remains of mammoth and woolly rhinoceros from the Argex-quarry at Kruibeke (East Flanders). The finds were retrieved from a gravel layer at the contact between the Boom clay and the Pleistocene coversand at the base of the Flemish Valley. The freshness of the largest...

In this article we describe a first find of a seacow, Halitherium sp. A marine mammal best known from oligocene deposits from the Mainz Basin, Germany, among others. It concerns the proximal portion of a right upper arm bone, a humerus, heavily fossilized and gray-brown in color, which was trawled from the estuary of the Western Scheldt, Zeeland, t...

We studied the pollen content of a well-preserved coprolite of a Late-Glacial giant ground sloth (Mylodon darwinii) from the Mylodon Cave, province Última Esperanza, southern Chile. The specimen was obtained in 1909 and has been stored in a museum in the Netherlands since. It was radiocarbon dated to 13,140 ± 55 BP (15,927–15,522 cal BP), which fit...

Molars of eight large herbivore species (Megaloceros giganteus, Cervus elaphus, Rangifer tarandus, Alces alces, Bison priscus, Ovibos moschatus, Coelodonta antiquitatis and Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis) were collected ex situ from Pleistocene and Holocene sands dredged in the North Sea, and from Dutch inland sites. Folds in many molars contained c...

The paper is about the find of three remains of Macaca sylvanus on the beaches of the Netherlands. It is written in Dutch, and a translation by mr Henk Houtgraaf of the paper published in 2018 in the Revue de Paléobiologie.

Three fossils of cercopithecine monkeys were recently found on the beaches of Maasvlakte 2 and Hoek van Holland (the Netherlands), initially originating from a source area some 10-20 km off the coast. They are attributed to the Barbary macaque, Macaca sylvanus. The absence of rocky outcrops in the area of the present North Sea area suggests that th...

The abundance and richness of the fossil record place Milia as the richest Pliocene locality in Greece and among the richest in Europe, dating back to a crucial period for the faunal evolution in the Northern Hemisphere. During the initial period of research, the paleontologists were able to confidently identify the majority of the species that liv...

(1) Background: Over the last decades, important fossil records of Late Pliocene mammals and reptiles have been unearthed in Milia, Grevena (N Greece). This assemblage shows a remarkable composition and diversity, including the partial skeletons of mastodons that reached record-breaking sizes, abundant rhinos—the first occurrence of this species in...

Tusks of very young mammoths and other proboscideans are extremely rare in the fossil record. This article presents all deciduous tusks and newly-developing permanent tusks of woolly mammoths which are known from Dutch localities and the North Sea. Four deciduous tusks are from The Netherlands and one is from Germany. Five specimens of newly-develo...

Middens (nests and caches) of Late Pleistocene arctic ground squirrels ( Urocitellus parryii ) that are preserved in the permafrost of Beringia archive valuable paleoecological data. Arctic ground squirrels selectively include the plant material placed in middens. To account for this selectivity bias, we used a multi-proxy approach that includes an...

Elke Nederlandse en Belgische paleontoloog in spe heeft zonder twijfel gehoord van de indrukwekkende bijvangsten van de boomkorvisserij op de Noordzee in de vorm van fossiele botten. Maar in dit artikel nemen we je mee naar een echte opgraving. Wat graaf je op? Hoe graaf je het op en met welk gereedschap? Hoe moet je zo’n opgraving voorbereiden? Ko...

Near the end of the Pleistocene epoch, populations of the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) were distributed across parts of three continents, from western Europe and northern Asia through Beringia to the Atlantic seaboard of North America. Nonetheless, questions about the connectivity and temporal continuity of mammoth populations and species...

Elephas (Palaeoloxodon) antiquus is a well-known elephant species of the Middle and Late Pleistocene of Europe, but few skeletons so far have been described in detail. Here we present a detailed account of a partial skeleton in good condition from the alluvial sands of the Amyntaio coal mines, Macedonia, Greece. It represents a large male aged in i...

This paper presents the results from a tooth microwear analysis of three proboscideans (Mammuthus rumanus, Mammuthus meridionalis, and Anancus arvernensis) from four Early Pleistocene localities in Europe (Red Crag, Norwich Crag, Chilhac, and Eastern Scheldt). The particularity of these four localities is that mammoths and gomphotheres co-occur. Th...

Pathologies of Elephas antiquus Falconer & Cautley, 1847 (Proboscidea, Elephantidae) from Eordaia, Macedonia, Greece.

Recently fossils of Early Pleistocene hares (Leporidae) were recovered from dredged sediment from the Eurogeul area. These finds demonstrate for the first time the presence of hares in the early pleistocene fauna of the bottom of the North Sea. The material consists of a premolar (p3) and a mandible (inc. p3-m2), recovered from the artificial beach...

Two different species of Early Villafranchian proboscideans were contemporaneous in Milia (Grevena, Western Macedonia, Greece): the large zygodont, Borson's mastodon, Mammut borsoni (Hays, 1834), and the smaller gomphothere, the mastodon of Auvergne, Anancus arvernensis (Croizet et Jobert, 1828), the former being predominant. Since 1996 partial ske...

Humans colonized the Balearic Islands 5–4 ka ago. They arrived in a uniquely adapted ecosystem with the Balearic mountain goat Myotragus balearicus (Bovidae, Antilopinae, Caprini) as the only large mammal. This mammal went extinct rapidly after human arrival. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the extinction of M. balearicus. For the...

A n e w m u s e u m i n the Siatista Historical Palaeontolo a stegodon in Europe and the maki T he Historical Palaeontological Collection of Siatista (HPCS), housed in a school building in Siatista, Kozani, Macedonia in Greece, was studied by the authors during the summer of 2009. The collection was assembled by local people from 1902 onwards, unde...

In northern Greece, 45km north of Thessaloniki, one of the few public caves in Northern Greece is situated in the Agios Georgios Hill, near Kilkis. The cave is famous for its stalactites and stalagmites, its cave environment and thousands of fossilised bones. Since 1986, approximately 80,000 people have visited this cave and guided tours are provid...

The Kostolac mammoth was discovered in 2009 in Pleistocene deposits adjacent to the Drmno open-cast lignite mine in the Serbian Danube Basin. On the basis of cranial and dental features, the individual is identified as the so-called ‘steppe’ mammoth, Mammuthus trogontherii. The remains are those of an old male of estimated age around 62 years, and...

The Muirkirk Mammoth, found in 1895 2.4 km northeast of the village of Muirkirk in southern Ontario, is the most complete woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) skeleton known from Canada. Approximate tusk measurements and extreme wear on the sixth molars indicate it is best referred to an old male. Its geological age was controversial because the...

A left lower molar of the European jaguar, Panthera onca gombaszoegensis (Kretzoi, 1938), collected ex situ at the locality 'De Kuilen' near Langenboom (province of Noord-Brabant, The Netherlands), is described and illustrated. This specimen is compared to Early Pleis-tocene material from Untermassfeld (Thüringen, eastern Germany) and from Tegelen...

This paper briefly describes some recently discovered remains of the straight-tusked elephant, Elephas antiquus, from Greece. Material of this extinct proboscidean was found in four localities in Northern Greece: Kaloneri and Sotiras in Western Macedonia, Xerias in Eastern Macedonia, and Larissa in Thessaly. In addition, published elephant remains...

Despite decades of research, the roles of climate and humans in driving the dramatic extinctions of large-bodied mammals during the Late Quaternary period remain contentious. Here we use ancient DNA, species distribution models and the human fossil record to elucidate how climate and humans shaped the demographic history of woolly rhinoceros, wooll...

The paleodietary ecology of Late Pleistocene ungulate faunas of the Mammoth Steppe ecosystem was investigated at Fairbanks (Alaska) and Brown Bank (North Sea) through dental mesowear and microwear analysis. The purpose of the study is to address questions concerning the paleoecology of the Mammoth Steppe, an ecosystem that has no extant analog. Den...

1 and Dick Mol 2 Palaeontological research and systematic excavations in the area of Milia started in 1996 by Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, when a partial skel-eton of Mammut borsoni (HAYS, 1834), was unearthed from unconsoli-dated sand deposits of Aliakmon river at the locality called "Milia 1". The Milia paleontological heritage has been...

One of the most unique findings of the last years is the carcass of the woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis), which was found in June 2007, in Lower Kolyma district of Yakutia by miners of "Kolyma" mine in the vicinity of the Cherskyi settlement. The remains of woolly rhinos are not as abundant as the remains of other representatives of mamm...

From 3 million years ago onward this was a very dangerous area for herbivores like gazelle, hipparions, rhino and mastodon species such as juvenile Mammut borsoni. Carnivores roamed the area in search of a good meal of However, one of the most ferocious animals of that time, a hyper-carnivorous predator, was the scimitar-toothed cat Homotherium wit...

On Tuesday, May 27, 2009, in an open lignite mine near Kostolac, approximately 90 km east of Belgrade a skeleton of a mammoth was discovered. As in other cases it pertained to the removal of deposits that covered lignite strata in the quarry of Kostolac. A co-worker informed the archaeologist of the archeological park " Vimancium " about hitting fo...

In August 2008, a survey has yielded a skull of Mammuthus trogontherii in the ancient maar of Nolhac (Haute-Loire, France). This short article summarizes the geological, chronological and historical context of this discovery. Taxonomic implications are also discussed.

Fossil remains of at least four mature to old mature male individuals of Mammuthus primigenius have been discovered in a peat-bog of Late Pleistocene age, situated near to the town of Padul in the Granada Basin (Southern Spain). Radiocarbon dates indicate the presence of woolly mammoth in Southern Spain between 35.8 and 25.7 ka BP (40.4–30.6 cal ka...

The glacial/interglacial climatic cycles of the Pleistocene resulted in significant variations in sea level. During glacial periods sea levels fell dramatically. The southern North Sea became a dry-land area with both rivers and lakes. Hundreds of thousands of fossil bones of Pleistocene mammals, both terrestrial and marine, have been fished from t...

Part of a large male woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) was preserved in permafrost in northern Yakutia. It was radiocarbon dated to ca. 18,500 14C yr BP (ca. 22,500 cal yr BP). Dung from the lower intestine was subjected to a multiproxy array of microscopic, chemical, and molecular techniques to reconstruct the diet, the season of death, and t...

Tijdens de ijstijden van het Pleistoceen lag de Noordzee droog. Het leek wel een koude, droge Serengeti. In dit rijk geïllustreerde boek komen de dieren voorbij die in de verschillende perioden op de Noordzeebodem leefden. De auteurs verzamelden hun botten op de visafslag of haalden ze hoogstpersoonlijk van de zeebodem omhoog. Ze bestudeerden de bi...

To understand the role of climate change in the extinction of Mammuthus primigenius in Eurasia, we examine spatial and temporal variations in growth increment and oxygen isotope (δ18O) profiles of radiocarbon dated mammoth tusks. We serially sampled tusk dentin in late Pleistocene tusks from the Taimyr Peninsula and Chukotka and Holocene tusks from...

Results are based on ten hyoid characters of seven proboscidean taxa; four belong to the subfamily Elephantinae. Using PAUP we generated six equally parsimonious trees. The consensus tree yields two polytomies: in the basal polytomy the relationships among Mammut, gomphotheres, Stegodon, and Loxodonta are not resolved; in the other polytomy Palaeol...

We discuss seven radiocarbon dates from remains of the straight-tusked elephant, Elephas antiquus Falconer and Cautley, 1847, from The Netherlands. These dates show that there is a strong possibility that this species became extinct much later in North Western Europe as is commonly accepted. The youngest radiocarbon date we present is 37,440 (+350,...

Results are based on ten hyoid characters of seven proboscidean taxa; four belong to the subfamily Elephantinae. Using PAUP we generated six equally parsimonious trees. The consensus tree yields two polytomies: in the basal polytomy the relationships among Mammut, gomphotheres, Stegodon, and Loxodonta are not resolved; in the other polytomy Palaeol...

The Eurogeul is the shipping-lane gully in front of Rotterdam harbour. Due to the combination of suction-dredging and fishing activities, diverse faunae are found on its bottom. This paper briefly describes the fauna, consisting of 13 terrestrial mammals and six marine mammal species. Radiocarbon dating gave two time-periods from which the bones or...

The interdisciplinary North Sea Project aims at investigating the biotic history of the Pleistocene in the Southern Bight of the North Sea. Humans were part of these biotopes too as Palaeolithic flint artefacts prove. Based on a large fossil record and radiocarbon dating, it becomes clear that reindeer was part of the Late Pleistocene Mammoth-fauna...

During a series of expeditions organized by CERPOLEX/Mammuthus to the Taimyr region in northern Siberia several mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) carcasses were discovered and subsequently excavated and studied. The oldest specimen is the Arilakh Mammoth (ca. 55,800 BP). Much younger are the Jarkov Mammoth (ca. 20,380 BP) and the Fishhook Mammoth (ca...

Alignment of cyt bclones from overlapping PCR fragments used to determine the sequences for each specimen analyzed. Symbols as in additional fig. 1.

Alignment of hypervariable region clones from overlapping PCR fragments used to determine the sequences for each specimen analyzed. The consensus sequence of OMModCl was used as a reference. Dots indicate identity to the consensus sequence. Differences are indicated. Base pair sequences that could not be determined for a given clone are marked "N"....

Alignment of clones from overlapping PCR fragments used to determine 1,180 bp of OMTai39 cyt b. Symbols as in additional fig. 1. The reference is a modern muskox sequence taken from GenBank. Four additional modern muskox sequences are included in the alignment.

Clone sequences derived from multiple amplifications of sample OMBolL15564. All symbols are the same as in additional fig. 1, 2, 3. The modern DNA consensus sequence from additional fig. 1 is used as a reference sequence.

The modern wildherd of the tundra muskox (Ovibos moschatus) is native only to the New World (northern North America and Greenland), and its genetic diversity is notably low. However, like several other megafaunal mammals, muskoxen enjoyed a holarctic distribution during the late Pleistocene. To investigate whether collapse in range and loss of dive...

Part of a large male woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) was preserved in permafrost in northern Yakutia. It was radiocarbon dated to ca. 18,500 14 C yr BP (ca. 22,500 cal yr BP). Dung from the lower intestine was subjected to a multiproxy array of microscopic, chemical, and molecular techniques to reconstruct the diet, the season of death, and...

The presence of permafrost creates unique conditions for preservation not only of skeletal parts but also of parts of carcasses of extinct animals. A significant part of the permafrost fossils dating to the Quaternary has been found in the territory of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic that occupies most of Eastern Siberia. The most interesting and spec...

Saber-toothed cats (Machairodontinae) were wide-spread, top predators of the Pleistocene terrestrial ecosystem. In Europe, they previously were known only from the early and middle Pleistocene (Adam, 1961; Turner and Anton, 1997), and their fossils are always extremely rare. The previous youngest record was from Steinheim a/d Murr, Germany, where a...

During a series of expeditions organized by CERPOLEX/Mammuthus to the Taimyr region in northern Siberia several mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) carcasses were discovered and subsequently excavated and studied. The oldest specimen is the Arilakh Mammoth (ca. 55,800 BP). Much younger are the Jarkov Mammoth (ca. 20,380 BP) and the Fishhook Mammoth (ca...

This paper presents 75 new radiocarbon dates based on late Quaternary mammal remains recovered from eastern Taimyr Peninsula and adjacent parts of the northern Siberian lowlands, Russian Federation, including specimens of woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), steppe bison (Bison priscus), muskox (Ovibos moschatus), moose (Alces alces), reindeer (...

A field survey organized in the framework of the Mammuthus project was recently carried out in the Taimyr Peninsula (Siberia, 26 April - 14 May 2001) in order to extract a mammoth carcass from the permafrost. The ground-penetrating radar (GPR) technique was firstly used to accurately locate the bones and tissue of the carcass. A 1 m(3) block contai...

: The Jarkov Mammoth was discovered in 1997 on the Taimyr Peninsula, Taimyr, Siberia. The remains of this 20,380 year old woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) were extracted from the frozen tundra under winter conditions in September/October 1999. The carcass and the surrounding sediments were taken out of the tundra using heavy equipment. The bl...

The Netherlands and the adjacent part of the North Sea are well known for their abundant remains of late Pleistocene mammals. On the other hand, fossils of Pliocene and early Pleistocene age are comparatively rare in this area. This chapter deals with dredged remains of proboscideans from the Plio-Pleistocene in the North Sea area. Dredging operati...