On dredged specimens of Anancus, Archidiskodon, and Equus from the Schelde Estuary, Netherlands

Last year Prof. Dr. I.M. van der Vlerk brought to my attention a collection of fossil remains of mammals dredged up in the East Schelde, province of Zeeland, Netherlands. The fossils were obtained by the Schot brothers of the ZZ 8 from the bottom of a through ca. 1500 m long, 200 m wide, and 35 to 45 m deep along the South coast of Schouwen island North of the Roggenplaat, and belong to the municipal museum of Zieriksee. The keeper, Mr. P. van Beveren, suggested that they be identified. Prof. Van der Vlerk kindly arranged a short visit to Zieriksee to enable me to select the specimens described in the present contribution, and Prof. Dr. B.G. Escher, director of the Geological Museum at Leiden, had the photographs taken at his institution by Mr. W.F. Tegelaar. This cooperation is here gratefully acknowledged. The fossils dredged from the East Schelde, as might be expected, are of various ages. Besides remains of mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, bison, and red deer, there are teeth of bunomastodontids and of primitive elephantines. Very similar teeth from the East Schelde have already been described by the late Miss Dr. A. Schreuder (1944, 1945a, 1949), who identified them as Anancus arvernensis (Croizet et Jobert) and Archidiskodon planifrons (Falconer et Cautley) respectively. The fossils thus identified are stained jet black, and for this reason have been referred to as “black fossils” in the Dutch literature (Van der Vlerk, 1938, p. 10; Van der Vlerk and Florschütz, 1950, p. 63; Van der Vlerk, 1951, p. 119/120; 1952, pp. 156, 157). They are taken to represent a fauna somewhat older than that of Tegelen in Limburg province (= Upper Villafranchian: Schreuder, 1945b), and have been correlated with the Red Crags of England, Upper Pliocene or Lower Pleistocene according to one’s own favoured definition of the Plio-Pleistocene boundary