Dated Paleontological cave sites of Central Europe from Late Middle Pleistocene to early Upper Pleistocene (OIS 5 to OIS 8)

Caves are terrestrial depositories that preserve a large variety of organic and inorganic remains. These may contain important Quaternary climatic and ecological information. Most of the faunal remains, however, cannot be linked to any Interglacial or Glacial period exclusively. Reliable dating of such remains is therefore required. Experience has, however, shown that ESR dating of speleothems or ²³⁰Th/U dating of bones are of disputable value. Only TIMS-²³⁰Th/U dating of speleothems appears to yield reliable ages. Dating the bottom and top of speleothem layers permit assigning Pleistocene faunal remains to the OIS chronology if the deposition of the speleothems and the faunal remains are clearly correlated. Care must be taken to consider the depositional situation of each site before interpreting any age dates. In this paper we present an overview of all numerically dated paleontological cave sites in Central Europe between OIS 5 and OIS 8. A total of 25 strata were dated from 13 sites, most of them deposited during OIS 5; the rest belonging to OIS 6 and 7. Numerically dated paleontological sites older than OIS 8 are not known.     

Radiation,evaporation and the maintenance of turbulence under stable conditions in the lower atmosphere

An expression is derived relating the critical flux Richardson number with the critical (gradient) Richardson number. In contrast to an earlier analysis by Townsend (1958), which is restricted to the atmosphere well outside the earth's boundary layer, the present treatment is intended specifically for turbulent flow in the lower atmosphere and it takes account of the effect of evaporation on the stability. The effect of radiation on the rate of destruction of the mean square of the temperature fluctuations is obtained by considering the radiative flux divergence in a stratified atmosphere and by using a simple functional relationship to represent empirical emissivity data.It was found that evaporation and radiation increase the critical Richardson number by a sensible amount depending on the atmospheric conditions, mainly temperature, humidity and the gradients. There is no definite critical Richardson number but rather a range between 0.25, below which turbulence is very likely, and somewhat higher than 0.5, above which turbulence is improbable. The value of the critical Richardson number can be expressed in terms of evaporation, radiation and the ratio ( _w /u _*) which also appears not to have a definite critical value. Evaporation and radiation cause the ratio ( _w /u ^*) to be larger than unity under neutral conditions. These results, based on the assumption of Reynolds' analogy,K ^H =K ^M , are consistent with the available experimental evidence.     

Unexpected records of ‘deep‐sea’ carnivorous sponges Asbestopluma hypogea in the shallow NE Atlantic shed light on new conservation issues

Marine cave communities have been a continued source of ecological surprises, among other things because of their close ecological and evolutionary ties with the deep sea. The discovery of cladorhizid sponges, the deepest occurring poriferan family, in shallow Mediterranean caves in the 1990s was one such surprise, leading to the generally accepted hypothesis that the whole family was carnivorous, an unprecedented feeding mode for sponges. The recent observation of the cave species Asbestopluma hypogea in the Mediterranean bathyal, confirmed the view that some shallow caves can occasionally shelter otherwise deep‐dwelling species. Here we present new distribution data of A. hypogea, from deep Mediterranean locations, and for the first time from Atlantic locations. Among the new Atlantic records, the most surprising ones are located in three different geographic areas (Ria de Arousa, Groix Island and Cherbourg) of the NW European coasts, from the Iberian Peninsula to the English Channel, where A. hypogea reaches SCUBA depths (5–50 m), while not sheltered in marine caves. The carnivorous sponge however reaches its shallowest occurrence (5 m), in a small cave at Groix Island. The ecological significance of these discoveries, particularly the very patchy distribution and peculiar dynamics, are noteworthy, and the shallow occurrence of A. hypogea, together with other deep‐water or uncommon species, constitute unique assemblages that must be considered in conservation plans.