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Middle-to-Late Pleistocene malacofauna from the archeopaleontological site of Oued Sarrat (Tajerouine area, NW Tunisia)

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Abstract

The malacofauna collected from the archeopaleontological site in Oued Sarrat (Tajerouine area, NW Tunisia) is the first reference from the Middle and Late Pleistocene stratigraphic series in Tunisia. These malacologic assemblages are abundant but little diversified; they are considered as continental, lakeside, and fluviatile ecosystem forms. They are associated with bones of small and large vertebrates and lithic artifacts. The dominant species of gastropods are Cernuella virgata (Da Costa, 1778), Xerosecta cespitum (Draparnaud, 1801), and Sphincterochila baetica (Rossmässler, 1854) which are typical of the Mediterranean regions. The abundance of these pulmonate terrestrial gastropods indicates a post-mortem transport of shells by floods and fluvial channels. The only bivalve, Unio ravoisieri (Deshayes, 1847), still common in the rivers of northern Tunisia, characterizes a typical lakeside environment, with relatively low energy. Considering the recently discovered associated vertebrate remains, their occurrence corroborates the onset of a paleoenvironment landscape with swamps, or even a shallow freshwater paleolake with close forests. Hence, this environment also inhabited by a diversity of large mammal species and other abundant microvertebrates and invertebrates was a support for human survival within these northern African latitudes.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants CGL2010-12138-E and CGL2010-15326/BTE (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness), AECI-PCI A1/037481/11 (Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs), and GENCAT 2014 SGR 901 (Generalitat de Catalunya, Spain). The logistics were provided by the Bizerte Faculty of Sciences (Carthage University) and the National Office of Mines (ONM).

The authors are grateful to Prs. Nicole Limondin, Eike Neubert, Henk K. Mienis, and Amina Damerdji, specialists in malacofauna, for valuable discussions. Professor Ijed Moussa, teacher at the Institut “Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Carthage,” is warmly thanked for her kind assistance in the English revision of a first draft of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Département des Sciences de la Terre, Faculté des Sciences de Bizerte, Université de Carthage, Jarzouna, 7021, Bizerte, Tunisia

    Narjess Karoui-Yaakoub, Moncef Said Mtimet, Semeh Bejaoui, Lamjed Amri, Noureddine Khalloufi & Lassaad Ben Aissa

  2. ICREA, Barcelona, Spain

    Bienvenido Martínez-Navarro

  3. Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social, Campus Sescelades URV (Edifici W3), 43007, Tarragona, Spain

    Bienvenido Martínez-Navarro

  4. Àrea de Prehistoria, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Avda. Catalunya, 35, 43002, Tarragona, Spain

    Bienvenido Martínez-Navarro

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  1. Narjess Karoui-Yaakoub
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  2. Moncef Said Mtimet
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  3. Semeh Bejaoui
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Correspondence to Narjess Karoui-Yaakoub.

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Karoui-Yaakoub, N., Mtimet, M.S., Bejaoui, S. et al. Middle-to-Late Pleistocene malacofauna from the archeopaleontological site of Oued Sarrat (Tajerouine area, NW Tunisia). Arab J Geosci 9, 345 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-016-2310-4

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