Oleg Mandic

Naturhistorisches Museum Wien · Department of Geology and Palaentology

The mobility of rare-earth elements (REE) in low-grade diagenetic regimes, potentially leading to their clay-mediated fractionation, remains poorly understood. This study draws evidence from the argillitized Miocene tuff of the Southwestern Pannonian Basin (SPB) and adjacent Dinarides intramontane basins (DIB) to investigate the role of illite-smec...

Ascidians, or sea squirts, are sac‐like sessile tunicates commonly found in modern seas. Although the oldest ascidians, or at least ascidian‐like tunicates, are mid‐Cambrian in age, the quality of the ascidian fossil record is extraordinarily poor. It mostly consists of isolated finds or low‐diversity assemblages, often represented by mineral spicu...

The Miocene Paratethys Sea is frequently depicted as junction between the Proto-Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. Herein, we elucidate the biogeographic character of this large epicontinental Miocene sea based on its speciose gastropod fauna. We debunk the persistent myth that there was a connection between these marine realms during Langhian...

The Croatian Natural History Museum (CNHM) houses rich fossil collections from the Neogene deposits of Northern Croatia, comprising numerous scallops (Bivalvia: Pectinidae). During the Middle Miocene (Badenian = Langhian and early Serravallian), this region was located at the southwestern margin of the Central Paratethys. The value of the CNHM’s hi...

The Tethyan Seaway was the connection between the Eastern and Western Tethys which became restricted and finally closed during the Early and Middle Miocene. The growing Zagros Mountains split the seaway into two entities, the Iranian Gateway in the northeast and the Mesopotamian Gateway in the southwest. The reconstruction of the seaway is based on...

The Miocene Climate Optimum (MCO, ~ 17-14 Ma) was a time of extraordinary marine biodiversity in the Circum-Mediterranean Region. This boom is best recorded in the deposits of the vanished Central Paratethys Sea, which covered large parts of central to southeastern Europe. This sea harbored an extraordinary tropical to subtropical biotic diversity....

The Miocene Climate Optimum (MCO, ~ 17–14 Ma) was a time of extraordinary marine biodiversity in the Circum-Mediterranean Region. This boom is best recorded in the deposits of the vanished Central Paratethys Sea, which covered large parts of central to southeastern Europe. This sea harbored an extraordinary tropical to subtropical biotic diversity....

In the Early to Middle Miocene, the post‐orogenic intramontane lacustrine Sinj Basin that belonged to the Dinarides Lake System evolved in the area of the External Dinarides. A composite 770 m thick stratigraphic column was measured spanning the basin's stratigraphy. Eight facies were differentiated. Four facies are almost entirely composed of fres...

We present a detailed description of the Middle Miocene (Chokrakian and Karaganian) depositional environments of the Eastern Paratethys Sea in the southern Caspian Basin. The Chokrakian comprises a 500-m-thick succession of marls and sandstones, termed herein Javarem Formation, which formed in coastal marine environments. The lower Javarem Fm. deve...

We present previously unknown stacked bowl-shaped bioherms reaching a size of 45 cm in diameter and 40 cm in height from weakly solidified peloidal sand from the upper Sarmatian of the Paratethys Sea. The bioherms were mostly embedded in sediment, and the “growth stages” reflect a reaction on sediment accretion and sinking into the soft sediment. T...

Das erste Neuseeland-Tagebuch von Ferdinand von Hochstetter, das sog. Auckland-Tagebuch, liegt transkribiert und wissenschaftlich kommentiert vor. Es gewährt Einblicke in Hochstetters Forscherleben, seine Beziehungen zu den Maori, europäischen Kolonisten und Missionaren. Es illustriert wie Wissen auf Reisen generiert wurde und lässt auch Hochstette...

We present so far unknown stacked bowl-shaped bioherms reaching a size of 45 cm in diameter and 40 cm in height from weakly solidified peloidal sand from the upper Sarmatian of the Paratethys Sea. The bioherms were mostly embedded in sediment and the ‘stages’ reflect a reaction on sediment accretion and sinking into the soft sediment. The bioherms...

The aim of this study was to analyze temporal and spatial changes in paleoenvironments from demise of the Sarmatian Sea to the Lake Pannon transgression (~11.6 Ma), as an example of a sequence boundary in a semi- to fully isolated epicontinental basin. Borehole cores from the central Vienna Basin were subject to facies analysis, biostratigraphy, ge...

We present XRF-based element data and magnetic susceptibility measurements of a 60-m-long core of Upper Miocene deposits of Lake Pannon from the Vienna Basin (Austria). The deposits formed during the Tortonian Thermal Maximum, which was a global warming event during the Late Miocene. Statistically significant cyclicities occur in all records center...

We present an exhaustive survey of the geological-paleontological collection of the Natural History Museum Vienna (Austria) based on 353,704 objects acquired from 1919 to 2019. The data encompass information on geographic origin, provenance, stakeholders and mode of acquisition. Special focus is laid on the interwar period from 1919 to 1938, the Na...

We present a journey through the history of the Austrian Arctic collections stored in Geological-Paleontological Department of the Natural History Museum Vienna (NHMW). The NHMW-material was mainly acquired during four expeditions. The first was an Isbjørn expedition designed as a test cruise by Julius Payer and Carl Weyprecht in 1871. One year lat...

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Thanks to the favourable position within the Middle Miocene marine succession of the Vienna Basin, a geochronological study of the St. Georgen tuff becomes essential for the understanding of the timing of the middle Badenian transgression. This contribution reports new data on separated zircon U-Pb ages/phase chemistry and the clay mineralogy of al...

The Neogene Lake Pannon was the largest lake that ever existed in Europe. It attained its greatest extent during the Tortonian Thermal Maximum. For the first time, results from a detailed lake record documenting about 85 kyr of Late Miocene time in a continuously recovered, 60-m-long, clay-rich core of Lake Pannon are reported. This record includes...

In 1878, Arthur Waters described a bryozoan fauna from a Pleistocene (Calabrian) outcrop, at that time considered as Pliocene, located near the town of Brucoli in southeast Sicily (Italy). Waters' work on bryozoans was based on the material collected four years earlier by Theodor Fuchs, curator of the Imperial-Royal Mineralogical Court-Cabinet in V...

We present the first detailed intra-basin correlation of Upper Miocene deposits in the Austrian part of the Vienna Basin (VB) integrating the most important hydrocarbon fields. Herein, we use a high resolution dataset by separating the Pannonian (= Tortonian) stack into 20 lithostratigraphic units, which allow calculating regional differences in se...

The depocenters of epicontinental basins usually comprise relatively continuous depositional records, and these can be used in the determination of sediment routing and paleogeographic changes via a set of various geophysical, sedimentological, biostratigraphic and geochronological approaches. Although the margins of such basins will have a major r...

Auch nach mehreren Jahrzehnten der Erforschung wartet die egerische Transgressionsabfolge von Unterrudling bei Eferding (Oberösterreich), welche den Übergang der Flachwasserablagerungen der Linz-Melk Formation zu den Tiefwassersedimenten der Eferding Formation (EF) umfasst, noch mit Überraschungen auf. So war kurzzeitig eine Schicht in der siltig-t...

The Neogene Vienna Basin (VB) is a major hydrocarbon province with a long history of exploration accumulating extensive stratigraphic and structural information from numerous seismic and drilling programs. Based on the quantitative analysis of hundreds of foraminiferal samples from 52 drillings, we present the first continuous reconstruction of pal...

The North Alpine Foreland Basin (NAFB) comprises one of the most complete sedimentary records of the Oligocene and Miocene. Driven by global sea-level fluctuations, vast sedimentary influx and tectonic movement. The locality of Unterrudling near Eferding (Upper Austria) exposes the largest succession of sedimentary deposits from the late Oligocene...

The Vienna Basin (VB) originated during the early Miocene and represents one of the largest onshore oil and gas field in Europe. The VB is composed of several horst and graben structures forming different subbasins, each with its own geodynamic evolution and deviating paleobathymetric developments during the Miocene. We present an analysis of water...

Tuffaceous layers are regularly preserved in Miocene carbonate and siliciclastic sediments of the Dinarides and Eastern Alps in southeastern and central Europe. Detailed mineralogical and geochemical analyses of 13 tuffs of known ages acquired from sedimentary successions of the intramontane Dinarides basins and the southwestern Pannonian Basin wer...

The Miocene genus Rzehakia, an endemic brackish bivalve that lived in the Paratethys Sea, recorded in late Ottnangian sediments deposited during the regression of the Central Paratethys Sea in the semi-enclosed Alpine-Carpathian foreland basin, is closely related to the Rzehakia found hundreds of kilometres away in the early Badenian transgressive...

Loess is terrestrial, clastic sediment formed by the accumulation of wind-blown dust. It is usually inter-bedded with paleosol horizons, forming loess-paleosol successions (LPS). Due to their characteristics LPS's represent valuable records of climate changes during Pleistocene. The thickest LPS sections in Croatia are in the Baranja region. Stable...

Highly curved orogens often demonstrate a complex poly-phase tectonic evolution and significant strain partitioning. While the oroclinal bending towards the outer arc is understood to be often driven by rapid slab roll-back, processes driving such bending towards the back-arc domain are less understood. The Serbian segment of the larger, highly ben...

Miocene tuffs preserved in argillaceous sediment interbedded with lacustrine successions are commonly encountered throughout the Dinarides Lake System (DLS) in southeastern Europe. In this contribution the volcanic glass degradation and co-genetic Mn-Fe precipitation were studied in a 14.68 Ma felsic tuff from DLS Livno-Tomislavgrad Basin. Microbia...

The Dardanelles region has formed a key gateway connecting the Eastern Paratethys and the Aegean/Mediterranean since the late Miocene. Its sedimentary sequences contain crucial information about connectivity and tectonics but so far lack unambiguous age constraints. Only a few Miocene marine episodes have been documented and fossil assemblages are...

The Northern Aegean region evolved during the Miocene as a restricted land-locked basin with small ephemeral connections to both the Eastern Paratethys (former Black Sea) and Mediterranean. Its biostratigraphic data show mixed Paratethys-Mediterranean components, but the Paratethys fauna has generally been neglected for chronologic reconstructions....

During the Ottnangian (Burdigalian, early Miocene), the North Alpine Foreland Basin operated as a sea-way connecting the Central Paratethys Sea with the Rhône Basin in the Western Mediterranean. Within this short time window, an intensive faunal exchange between the two paleo-biogeographic units occurred, which is reflected in macrofossil assemblag...

During the early and middle Miocene, the Dinarides Lake System (DLS) was a major hotspot of freshwater mollusk diversity in southeastern Europe. The numerous intramontane lake basins, originating by combined effects of tectonic subsidence and humid climate, accumulated thick lacustrine successions. Diagenetic overprint and leaching of these carbona...

For the first time, a concise lithostratigraphic scheme for the lower and middle Miocene (Ottnangian – Badenian) of the northern and central Vienna Basin is proposed, which is based on the integration of core-material, well-log data and seismic information from OMV. For all formations and members type sections are proposed, geographic distribution...

In the late Miocene, a large inland sea known as the Eastern Paratethys stretched out across the present-day Black Sea – Caspian Sea region. The basin was mostly endorheic and its water budget thus strongly dependent on regional climate. The basin was therefore prone to high-amplitude water-level fluctuations and associated turnovers in water chemi...

40 Ar/ 39 Ar radio-isotopic dating of volcanic tuffs intercalated in sediments can provide high accuracy age control on the deposition of sedimentary rocks. State-of-the-art mass spectrometers such as the ARGUS VI+ are able to acquire highly precise ages for relatively small single grains (~90-250 μm for Miocene samples). Single grain measurement c...

The first in‐depth revision of a lacustrine freshwater mollusc fauna of the Serbian Lake System (SLS) is carried out. We describe and discuss well‐preserved faunas from two localities in central and southern Serbia (Mađere and Medoševac), along with the reinvestigation of type material of several species described in the late nineteenth and early t...

The middle Miocene was a key period in Earth’s history as climate changed from one of the warmest phases of the Cenozoic Era, the Miocene Climatic Optimum (MCO), to colder conditions with the establishment of permanent ice sheets on Antarctica. This climate change had a profound impact on terrestrial ecosystems affecting vegetation worldwide. Howev...

In the Alpine foreland and the Vienna Basin loess-paleosol sequences (LPS) are common. Some of the most famous LPS sites in the circum-Alpine area include Stratzing, Göttweig, Willendorf, Krems-Wachtberg, and Stillfried, which cluster in a relatively small area along the Danube river in Lower Austria. LPS provide detailed insights into climate-driv...

A large karst doline at section Hrastje – Lešnica in the Dolenjska region (SE Slovenia) was uncovered during the construction of Slovene highway No. A2. Its fill consists of brownish-yellow clay to silt with plant remains and ferrugineous coatings after root casts and gastropods (paleosol horizon) in the bottom, and overlying thick lacustrine lamin...

Palaeontologists have known about the fossiliferous site at Thermopigi (Central Macedonia, N. Greece) for the past two decades. Following the first field campaigns a wealth of new information on the overall geology, taphonomy and palaeontology of the site became available. With more than 1300 fossils, representing at least 20 mammalian species, The...

The Ugljevik Basin is located in the north-east of the Dinarides and makes part of the Dinaride Lake System (DLS; KRSTIĆ et al., 2001; MANDIC et al., 2012). Numerous tuffs from early and middle Miocene are recovered throughout DLS making a record of an extensive volcanic activity. The Ugljevik Basin, in contrast to the most of DLS basins, has been...

In the Dinarides a vast system of Alpine lakes, usually referred to as the Dinaride Lake System (DLS; KRSTIĆ et al., 2001; MANDIC et al., 2012), came into existence at the onset of Miocene and DLS affiliated lakes extended even further to adjacent areas of the Pannonian Basin. With time the range of freshwater or brackish to marine depositional con...

The timing and mode of the marine flooding of the southern margin of the Pannonian basin in SE Europe is still a matter of debate. In central Serbia, integrated bio-magnetostratigraphic data and quantified high-resolution records are completely missing. Here, we provide paleoenvironmental and paleoecological constraints from the Slanci section loca...

We present the first systematic description of a Tortonian (late Miocene) gastropod assemblage from the Ambug Hill section in the Tutong District in Brunei Darussalam. The low-diversity assemblage comprises 62 species of which 37 are unknown from other Neogene faunas of the Indo-West Pacific Region (IWP), 23 species are formally described as new. C...

We present the first systematic description of a Tortonian (late Miocene) gastropod assemblage from the Ambug Hill section in the Tutong District in Brunei Darussalam. The low-diversity assemblage comprises 62 species of which 37 are unknown from other Neogene faunas of the Indo-West Pacific Region (IWP), 23 species are formally described as new. C...

The Pannonian Basin of Croatia is the largest back-arc extensional basin on the European continent, located between the Alps, Carpathians and Dinarides. Syn-rift subsidence started at ~18 Ma and predated the onset of the Miocene Climate Optimum (MCO; 17–14.7 Ma). In this paper, we investigate the evolution of the fluvial-lacustrine palaeoenvironmen...

We present a taxonomic and palaeoecological analysis of a continental mollusc fauna from a mammoth bearing succession near Bullendorf in Lower Austria. The taxonomic analysis comprises morphological descriptions and SEM documentation of 15 Pleistocene gastropod species. A Principal Component Analysis of the quantitative and qualitative composition...

The Central Paratethys was a large-scale Oligo-Miocene epicontinental sea located in Central and Eastern Europe. It was separated from the Mediterranean by the Alpine orogenic belt. The Paratethys progressively flooded the Pannonian back-arc basin that formed during the early to middle Miocene. Along the southern margin of the basin, the maximum ex...

Sarmatian and Pannonian cores, drilled at the western margin of the Vienna Basin in the City of Vienna, reveal a complex succession of marine and lacustrine depositional environments during the middle to late Miocene transition. Two Sarma-tian and two Pannonian transgressive-regressive sequences were studied in detail. Identical successions of bent...

We describe a new species of the Ariantinae genus Paradrobacia from the Middle Miocene (Langhian) of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The genus was represented so far only by three species from the Middle Miocene of Austria, the Late Miocene of Greece, and the Pliocene of Germany. Based on the conchological features of all available species, the genus Parad...

The Sarajevo-Zenica Basin of Bosnia-Herzegovina was part of the Dinaride Lake System, a large network of Miocene long-lived freshwater basins in southeastern Europe. The basin contains a thick sedimentary succession of carbonates, coals and mixed siliciclastic deposits that reflects the paleoclimatic and tectonic evolution of the region. In this st...

From the Late Oligocene to the Late Miocene, the central Mediterranean area was characterized by the extensive deposition of phosphate-rich sediments. They are usually represented by 10 to 20-cm-thick hardgrounds made of phosphatic and glauconitic sediments containing a rich macrofossil association. This study represents the first thorough investig...

Sedimentological facies models for (semi-)isolated basins are less well developed than those for marine environments, but are critical for our understanding of both present-day and ancient deltaic sediment records in restricted depositional environments. This study considers an 835 m thick sedimentary succession of mid-Pliocene age, which accumulat...

Hydrocarbon exploration in the Bernhardsthal and Bernhardsthal-Sued oil fields documents an up to 2000 m thick succession of middle and upper Badenian deposits in this part of the northern Vienna Basin (Austria). Based on palaeontological analyses of core-samples, well-log data and seismic surveys we propose an integrated stratigraphy and describe...

Shell beds represent a useful source of information on various physical processes that cause the depositional condition. We present an automated method to calculate the 3D orientations of a large number of elongate and platy objects (fossilized oyster shells) on a sedimentary bedding plane, developed to support the interpretation of possible deposi...