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Beschreibung, Vergleich und Verbreitung der Bivalven-Arten aus den Belpbergschichten (Obere Meeresmolasse, mittleres Burdigalien) in der Umgebung von Bern, Schweiz. 1. Teil: Palaeotaxodonta und Pteriomorphia, exklusive Ostreacea - Teil 1
Abstract
The rich and diverse macrofauna of the Belpberg-Schichten (upper part of the Upper Marine Molasse, Middle Burdigalian) in the south and west of Bern, Switzerland, is subject of new investigations. First, 80 species of bivalves were determined, 30 of which have not been known in this area. In this first part of a series of publications the first 23 species (Palaeotaxodonta and Pteriomorphia pro parte, are described, figured and compared with other species. The provenance and abundance of the species in the Belpberg-Schichten and the distribution (according to the list of synonyms) are given. The location of the area at the transition from the Central Paratethys (E-Bavaria to Ukraine and Rumania) to the Western Paratethys (W-Bavaria, Vorarlberg to Rhone valley) is manifested by the fauna of the bivalves. Species characteristic of each bioprovince, as well as species occuring in the whole area are present. Some species as Pecten helvetiensis are known from Switzerland only.
... Subsequent regression during the middle Ottnangian caused the closure of this passage and gradual retreat of the sea, which was replaced by brackishwater embayments or lakes marking the base of the late Ottnangian (Piller et al. 2007;Grunert et al. 2010Grunert et al. , 2012. Macrofossil assemblages of early and late Ottnangian age are relatively abundant and well documented from Switzerland (Pfister and Wegmüller 1994, 2007aPfister et al. 2011), Germany (e.g., Hölzl 1958Schlickum 1963Schlickum , 1964Schlickum , 1966Schlickum , 1971; Kowalke and Reichenbacher 2005;Höltke 2009;Schneider et al. 2009), Austria (Hoernes 1875;Sieber in Aberer 1958;Schultz 1965;Mandic and Ć orić 2007), and Czech Republic (Č tyroký 1972). In contrast, middle Ottnangian fossil assemblages are particularly scarce and poorly documented. ...
... Originally described from the early Ottnangian Zogelsdorf Formation of Lower Austria (age according to Piller et al. 2007), P. hornensis is present in the same time slice throughout the Central Paratethys, whereas P. herrmannseni is restricted to the Ottnangian strata of the Western Paratethys in Switzerland, Germany, and Upper Austria. Yet, the records of P. hornensis from Switzerland and the adjacent Pfänder region (Vorarlberg, Austria) (Rutsch 1928(Rutsch , 1958Blumrich 1930;Pfister and Wegmüller 1994) may indicate that shell morphologies resembling P. hornensis also occur in the Western Paratethys. Consequently, Pecten hornensis and P. herrmannseni may either represent paleogeographical subspecies or morphologic varieties of a single species, which would have to be named Pecten herrmannseni Dunker, 1848, according to the principle of priority. ...
... Distribution-Pecten herrmannseni occurs in the lower and middle Ottnangian (Upper Burdigalian) Upper Marine Molasse of Switzerland(Bern region;Pfister and Wegmüller 1994), Germany (Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria; Dunker 1848;Depéret and Roman 1910;Roger 1939;Steininger et al. 1973), and Upper Austria (Innviertel;Schultz 1965;Steininger et al. 1973). Moreover, P. herrmannseni is reported from the Middle and Upper Burdigalian of the Tagus Basin (central Portugal;Depéret and Roman 1902;da Veiga Ferreira 1961) and the Upper Burdigalian of the Rhône Valley and Provence (SE France;Depéret and Roman 1902;Mongin 1952). ...
The Bivalvia and Gastropoda from the Upper Marine Molasse deposits of the lower Rott Valley (North Alpine Foreland Basin, Lower Bavaria, SE Germany) comprise the first mollusk fauna of middle Ottnangian age (ca 17.5 Ma) to be documented in detail. Altogether, the assemblages from Brombach, Kainerding and Anzenkirchen yielded 27 species of Bivalvia and 9 species of Gastropoda. The bivalve species Spisula brombachensis n. sp. is described as new to science, and Aequipecten camaretensis is first reported from the Ottnangian of the North Alpine Foreland Basin. Furthermore, the well-preserved material allowed for the taxonomic revision of the Ottnangian index fossil Pecten herrmannseni. The bivalve community is dominated by suspension feeders, mostly shallow, soft bottom dwellers (Glycymeris, Anadara) and cementing epifauna (Ostrea). Gastropods almost exclusively comprise carnivorous browsers and predators. The parautochthonous assemblages are indicative of normal marine, well-oxygenized sandy-silty shoals at a water depth of presumably less than 20 m. Except for the presence of a single estuarine Crassostrea, the middle Ottnangian fauna is not indicative of reduced salinities. Consequently, the paleoenvironmental turnover to the brackish-water fauna of the directly overlying upper Ottnangian deposits of the Rzehakia Lake was abrupt. Glycymeris–Anadara–Ostrea communities similar to the one recorded from the Rott Valley are widespread in European seas and beyond during the Neogene and Quaternary.
... Gastrochaena (Kleemann, 1981) • Revision of various gastropod types of Mayer-Eymar (Gatto, 1990(Gatto, , 1991(Gatto, , 1992(Gatto, , 1993(Gatto, , 1997 • Revision and new descriptions of the bivalve fauna of the Miocene "Belpbergschichten", canton Bern, Switzerland (Pfister & Wegmüller, 1994, 1998, 1999 • Redescription of planktonic gastropods in the Mayer-Eymar collection (Zorn, 1995) • Description of new muricid genera (Vermeij, 1998) • Revision of the lower Oligocene fauna of Häring, Tyrol, Austria (Löffler, 1999) • Re-evaluation of the fauna of Santa Maria, Azores (Avila, 2009(Avila, , 2022 Many of the species described by Mayer-Eymar are not considered valid species any more, and many of them were allocated to other genera. A number of them represent different deformation stages. ...
Karl Mayer (later Karl Mayer-Eymar, 1826–1906) was a stratigrapher and palaeontologist who assembled during his long career a collection of Cenozoic (then “Tertiary”) mollusks that numbers more than 500′000 specimens. He mostly collected them himself at various localities in Europe and Egypt. In more than 175 publications he described more than 1100 new bivalve and gastropod species, the types of which are of paramount importance for mollusk taxonomists. Based on his collection, he furthermore, erected 13 new Cenozoic stages, five of them still in use today. Here the structure and content of this collection is described, along with an explanation of the labels which are at first not so easy to understand. The Mayer-Eymar collection is in the propriety of the “Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule” (ETH) in Zürich. From 1966 until 2020 it was on a permanent loan to the Natural History Museum Basel, where it was also curated. In October 2020 the collection was returned to the ETH.
A review on the Oligocene and Miocene stalked barnacles of the Paratethys Sea is presented. The fauna com-prises two lepadiform and eight scalpelliform species. Only two species are known from Oligocene deposits, four are documented from Lower Miocene formations, and another four species occur in the Middle Miocene. Only one Oligo-cene and one Miocene species occur in two different Para-tethyan basins in roughly coeval environments, and only a single Middle Miocene species is also known from the adja-cent Mediterranean Sea. This low degree of biogeographical similarity is probably a result from the still low number of publications dealing with this group. Stalked barnacles are often indicating bathyal or at least deep sublittoral environ-ments. Especially, the abundance of the benthic deep-water lepadiform Poecilasma in evaporitic deposits of the Middle Miocene Badenian Salinity Crisis may serve as new evidence for a deeper marine depositional environment. Scalpellum paratethyianum sp. nov. and Lepas sattmanni sp. nov. are described as new species; Arcoscalpellum renevieri (Mayer and Gümbel in Gümbel, 1861) is introduced as new combina-tion.
A late Burdigalian bathyal mollusc fauna from the Vienna Basin (Slovakia)
This is the first record of a bathyal mollusc fauna from the late Early Miocene of the Central Paratethys. The assemblage shows clear affinities to coeval faunas of the Turin Hills in the Mediterranean area and the Aquitaine Basin in France. The overall biostratigraphic value of the assemblage is hard to estimate due to the general very poor knowledge of Miocene bathyal faunas. Several species, however, are known from deep water deposits of the Middle Miocene Badenian stage as well. This implies Early Miocene roots of parts of the Middle Miocene deep water fauna and suggests a low turnover for bathyal mollusc communities at the Early-Middle Miocene boundary. The nassariid gastropod Nassarius janschloegli Harzhauser nov. sp. and the naticid gastropod Polinices cerovaensis Harzhauser nov. sp. are introduced as new species.
The present paper deals with the echinoid fauna of the Belpberg Beds, a lithostratigraphic unit in the Upper Marine Molasse cropping out southeast of Bern (Switzerland). In this unit, echinoids, in contrast to mollusks, are rare and of low diversity. The scarcity of echinoids is related to the environmental setting dominated by monotonous siliciclastic deposits and strong diagenetic alteration.
The echinoid fauna consists of three species Psammechinus dubius dubius, Echinocardium deikei and Hemipatagus ocellatus? Psammechinus dubius dubius and H. ocellatus typically occur in Burdigalian sediments in the Paratethys and help to confirm the dating obtained from the microfossils and molluscs of the Belpberg Beds. Furthermore, the Belpberg echinoid fauna is especially relevant for the palaeobiogeography with species common to both the Rhône Basin and the Central Paratethyan faunas.
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