EVOLUTION OF QUATERNARY FAUNAL COMPLEXES
Academic year and teacher
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- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2022/2023
- Teacher
- MARZIA BREDA
- Credits
- 6
- Didactic period
- Secondo Semestre
- SSD
- GEO/01
Training objectives
- The student will gain knowledge on the evolution of the Quaternary European continental mammal faunas (in particular from Southern Europe), with special emphasis on their importance for the palaeoecological reconstructions and as biochronological indicators, that makes them useful tools in any achaeozoological context.
Prerequisites
- General naturalistic knowledge, in particular about the principles of the evolutionary processes through time. Because of the diversity in background of the students (any kind of scientific or humanistic bachelor degree), the basal concepts necessary to the understanding of the program of this course, will be introduced in the first lessons to provide everybody with the necessary toolbox to undertake this course.
Course programme
- Propaedeutic concepts shortly illustrated in the first lessons: basic concepts of Palaeontology and fossilization; Climatic variations in the Quaternary and Oxigen Isotope Curve; basics of Classification and Systematics of Vertebrates; Nomenclatural hints; species concept in palaeontology; concepts of morpho-functional analysis that can be inferred from body proportions and dental morphology.
Main subjects of the Course: Biochronology versus Biostratigraphy. Methodological principles at the basis of the chronological subdivision in Large Mammal Ages and Faunal Units of Mediterranean Europe; methodological principles at the basis of the subdivision in Small Mammal Ages and Superzones/Zones of Eastern Europe. The succession of Quaternary faunal assemblages mainly focused on Italy: Faunal Units of the Villafranchian, Galerian, Aurelian and main correlated local faunas. Main coeval European faunas.
Small mammals typifying Superzones and Zones. Main Italian localities yielding a rich small mammal fauna.
Mammals from Quaternary deposits with biochronological, paleo-ecological and paleo-climatic meaning.
Laboratories: analysis of the skeleton of birds and mammals: articulation between the different anatomical portions and their morpho-functional interpretation. Anatomical identification of the main skeletal remains from Quaternary deposits. Didactic methods
- Frontal Learning and osteological laboratories. The latter are based on practical lessons on the identification of the remains of different taxa: to recognize the morphological characteristics peculiar to each taxon and their morpho-functional interpretation through the known ecology (diet, food exploitation, and locomotory adaptations) of modern related species.
The lessons are in person (in the lecture room indicated in the course website: https://corsi.unife.it/lm-preistoria) and broadcasted in streaming in the lecture rooms of the 3 associated universities and for students attending from outside the University Buildings. For the osteological laboratories, particular video-cameras are used, allowing the view of relatively small details. All the lectures are recorded and can be viewed at a later time through a password identification. Learning assessment procedures
- Oral test on the theoretical contents of the course, spanning all the main themes dealt with during the lectures: students must learn the evolution of the Quaternary faunal complexes (taxa typifying each Faunal Unit and small mammal zone), the palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental meaning of the main taxa and their phylogenetic relationships.
A practical phase follows of identification and morpho-functional interpretation of the osteological material. More than a precise identification of the osteological preparations (often already written on the specimens), the main goal must be the explanation of the morphological characters suggesting such an identification and of which diet and gait they correspond. Reference texts
- Unluckily there are no text-books dealing with the subject of this course. Scientific papers in English willl thus be the basis of the study. These review papers are uploaded in pdf on the course-site, where information is provided on which part of the program each of them deals with.
The papers in Italian are uploaded only to help Italian students not familiar with English; they are not necessary and can be overlooked because less updated and less informative than the papers in English.
However, the lectures provide a more updated review than any English paper uploaded on the site (summing up tens of specialistic papers on single taxa or localities). Thus the repeated watching of the recorded lectures, gives the best preparation to pass the exam.
On the course site are uploaded also pdf files of Osteological Atlases (consultation only) that can be useful to prepare the practical part of the exam.
The slides proyected during the lectures will not be provided as they would be of very little help since tehy are basically images without text. However, they can be seen, accompained by their explanation, in the recorded lectures.
