Analysis of Late Pleistocene megafauna and puparia from the Lent dredging site, province of Gelderland (the Netherlands)

Abstract

More than 900 vertebrate bones, ranging from Late Pleistocene to Holocene in age, have been identified in a collection that was recovered by a single dredging operation for the construction of artificial lakes near Lent (Nijmegen, province of Gelderland, the Netherlands). The Late Pleistocene assemblage comprises mainly Weichselian glacial fauna such as mammoths, reindeer and bison. Some Eemian fauna is represented as well, e.g. straight-tusked elephant. The abundance of certain species over others suggests that preservation bias had a considerable impact on this assemblage, while its time-averaged nature resulted in overrepresentation of certain species. A case study is here conducted on a fragmentary skull of a subadult woolly mammoth bull with embedded blowfly puparia. Some of these puparia are fully developed, indicating prolonged exposure of the mammoth carcass.