SECTION FOR QUATERNARY ZOOLOGY

The section keeps collections of Late Pleistocene and Holocene vertebrates from Denmark, Greenland and South America.

The Late Pleistocene (last interglacial-glacial cycle) collection from Denmark and Greenland consists of mammalian bone remains found redeposited in glacial sediments. The largest and most important fossil assemblage is, however, the Late Weichselian and Holocene bones of mammals, birds, fishes and a few reptiles and amphibians. These vertebrate bones are found in situ in geological as well as archaeological context.

The archaeozoological material represents an almost complete record of all bone materials excavated on archaeological sites in Denmark and Greenland, chronologically distributed from Late Palaeolithic to Historical Time and from Palaeoeskimo to the Norse Cultures.

The section has built up its own comparative collection of recent vertebrates especially prepared for the identification of archaeozoological bone materials. This can of course be supplemented with the proper collections of modern vertebrates already curated at the Department.

The main collections of foreign fossils are the skeletons of Edentata from La Plata, donated by V. Lausen and the fossils from Minas Gerais, Brazil, collected by Peter Wilhelm Lund. The Lausen collection was bought by Lausen in 1860 and consists of complete or almost complete skeletons of ground sloths and glyptodonts. The Lund collection consists of bones excavated by Lund around 1830-40 in limestone caves near Lagoa Santa, Minas Gerais. The bones represent mammals (including Homo), birds and reptiles and include several type specimens of rodents, edentates and primates. Because of weathering and water transport, the majority of the bones are strongly fragmented, but also complete skulls and other bones are preserved. Of special interest are the remains of some of the earliest South Americans, represented by a sample of skulls and lim bones of Homo sapiens from the Lake Sumidouro.

Det Kvartærzoologiske Centralregister.