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.