MATERIALS OF THE KONSTANTINOVSKAYA CULTURE FROM THE TEMERNITSKOYE FORTIFIED SETTLEMENT

В 2017-2018 гг. на территории Темерницкого городища в центральной части г. Ростова-на-Дону было обнаружено поселение энеолитического времени (константиновская культура). В статье отдельно рассмотрены эти материалы, представленные в подавляющем большинстве керамикой и кремневыми изделиями (рис. 2-4). Часть их находилась в переотложенном состоянии - в разрушенном слое или хозяйственных ямах первых веков н. э. Оставшаяся половина найдена в нижних практически стерильных слоях предматерика и в заполнении двух выявленных рвов энеолитического времени (рис. 1). Единственный сохранившийся участок культурного слоя исследован в западной части раскопа. Именно с этого участка происходят два шила, обогащенная медная руда и несколько фрагментов неорнаментированных стенок сосудов с примесью раковины. Находки из металла (2 шила, плоская капля металла, медная руда) проанализированы на микрофлуоресцентном рентгеновском спектрометре (рис. 5). По совокупности технологических, морфологических и орнаментальных признаков керамики энеолитический слой Темерницкого городища можно атрибутировать ранним этапом константиновской культуры Нижнего Подонья. Помимо эпонимного поселения наиболее близки к найденным материалы нижнего горизонта Ливенцовского поселения и слой 6 поселения Раздорское I. К исследованным материалам энеолитического времени Темерницкого городища хронологически близким является погребение, обнаруженное на территории грунтового некрополя Темерницкого городища. In 2017-2018 an Eneolithic settlement (attributed to the Konstantinovskaya culture) was discovered in the territory of the Temernitskoye fortified site in the center of Rostov-on-the-Don. The paper considers these materials represented mostly_by ceramics and flint items (Fig. 2-4). Some of them were redeposited and found in a disturbed layer or household pits dating to first centuries AD. The remainder items were found in bottom and practically sterile layers over the virgin soil and in the fill of two identified Eneolithic ditches (Fig. 1). The only surviving section of the cultural layer was examined in the western part of the excavation area. It yielded two awls, enriched copper ore and several undecorated walls of shell-tempered vessels. Metal finds (two awls, a flat metal drop, copper ore) were analyzed by an X-ray microfluorescence spectrometer (Fig. 5). Based on technological, morphological and decorative characteristics of the ceramics, the Eneolithic layer of the Temernitskoye fortified settlement can be attributed to the early stage of the Konstantinovskaya culture of the Lower Don region. Besides the eponymic settlement, the materials retrieved from the lower horizon at the Liventsovka settlement and layer 6 from Razdorskaya I are the closest to the finds. A burial found in the necropolis of the Temernitskoye fortified settlement is chronologically close to the examined Eneolithic materials found at the Temernitskoye settlement.

The earliest archaeological materials from excavations of 2013–2014 in the area of Yaroslavovo Dvorishche

This paper considers the archaeological artefacts from the lower horizon of cultural deposits of the site excavated in 2013–2014 at Yaroslavovo Dvorishche in Veliky Novgorod. On the basis of morphological examination of the finds, three chronological groups have been distinguished dating from the mediaeval period (10th–11th century), early Iron Age and the Early Metal Age.

Filling the gap: new precise Early Cretaceous radioisotopic ages from the Andes

Two tuffs in the Lower Cretaceous Agrio Formation, Neuquén Basin, provided U–Pb zircon radioisotopic ages of 129.09±0.16 Ma and 127.42±0.15 Ma. Both horizons are well constrained biostratigraphically by ammonites and nannofossils and can be correlated with the ‘standard’ sequence of the Mediterranean Province. The lower horizon is very close to the base of the Upper Hauterivian and the upper horizon to the Hauterivian/Barremian boundary, indicating that the former lies atc. 129.5 Ma and the latter atc. 127 Ma. These new radioisotopic ages fill a gap of over 8 million years in the numerical calibration of the current global Early Cretaceous geological time scale.

Blancan lagomorphs and rodents of the Deer Park assemblages, Meade County, Kansas

A new collection of lagomorphs and rodents from the Deer Park B local fauna (l.f.) of Meade County, Kansas is described and compared with other small mammal assemblages of the Meade Basin, including the underlying Deer Park A l.f. Deer Park A was correctly assigned by Hibbard to the Blancan, bridging the gap between earlier Blancan faunas such as Fox Canyon and the late Blancan Sanders l.f. Recent fieldwork indicates that the Deer Park quarries may lie in the Rexroad Formation, rather than in the Ballard Formation as previously assumed. The geology and extinct mammalian contingent at Deer Park suggest that the lower horizon of Deer Park A was an active spring that gradually turned into a marshy environment during Deer Park B time. The rodents of Deer Park B are indicative of an open prairie ecosystem that might have been somewhat more arid than that of southwestern Kansas today.

The Eocene larger foraminifer Lepidocyclina ariana Cole and Ponton, from the so-called Polylepidina gardnerae horizon at Little Stave Creek, Alabama

Recent sampling for larger foraminifers in the so-called Polylepidina gardnerae horizon in the middle Eocene Lisbon Formation of the Little Stave Creek section, southwest Alabama, did not produce any examples of the lepidocyclinid foraminifer Polylepidina gardnerae Cole, but several specimens of the stratigraphically younger species, Lepidocyclina ariana Cole and Ponton, were recovered. Although the P. gardnerae horizon is named on nearly all figures of this important Gulf Coast section published since 1944, preliminary research has also failed to turn up a published basis for the identification of P. gardnerae at this locality. As L. ariana and P. gardnerae are not normally found together, it is the writer's opinion that true P. gardnerae probably has not been collected from any part of the Lisbon Formation at Little Stave Creek. If it does occur, it should be found at a lower horizon than that indicated in the literature.

CRETACEOUS VERTEBRATES FROM THE ANDERSON RIVER N.W.T.

Vertebrate remains have been recovered from two horizons in late Cretaceous strata along the east bank of the Anderson River at latitude 69 °N. The lower horizon has produced a fauna very similar to that of the Niobrara Chalk in western Kansas, including mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and abundant toothed birds. The upper horizon has yielded a moderately short-necked plesiosaur of cimoliasaurian affinities. These vertebrates lived in or near a strait linking the Arctic Ocean with the interior sea in very late Cretaceous time.

Fossils from the Fuller's Earth of the Weymouth Anticline

Fuller's Earth was first recorded at the surface in the core of the Weymouth anticline by Damon (1860, p. 12). It was mapped by the Geological Survey in a semi-elliptical area south of Langton Herring, having a sea coast of about 1¼ miles on the West Fleet (1 inch map, sheet 341). The chief feature of interest is a lumachelle or oyster bed composed of a mass up to some 12 feet thick of the small oyster, Ostrea hebridica Forbes (= 0. sowerbyi Morris and Lycett), the var. elongata Dutertre predominating (see Damon, 1860 and 1884, p. 12, fig. 3). The oyster was recorded by Damon and by Strahan (1898, p. 5, and sheet 341) as O. acuminata J. Sowerby, but that species belongs to a lower horizon, below the Fuller's Earth Rock. The Langton Herring oyster bed, which is seen also at Watton Cliff near Bridport, lies in the Upper Fuller's Earth, above the Fuller's Earth Rock, which does not come to the surface in the Weymouth anticline. The lowest beds exposed in the anticline, for a few feet below the oyster bed, are tough clays with mudstone nodules and abundant Rhynchonella smithi (Davidson) (see Arkell, 1933, p. 252). With the Rhynchonellids there weather out also abundant fragments of a typical Fuller's Earth belemnite, which I follow some French authors in calling Belemnopsis bessina (d'Orb.).

On certain Anthracomyas from the Similis-Pulchra Zone of the Coal Measures

SUMMARY(1) Reasons are given for believing that the holotype of Anthracomya adamsi Salter (the genotype of Anthracomya) has been correctly identified.(2) It is shown that the horizon of this presumed holotype is near the middle of the Similis-Pulchra Zone, and is near if not identical with the horizon of A. hindi Wright.(3) Anthracomya adamsi at that horizon has no close connection with A. modiolaris (from which it may, however, have been derived at a lower horizon). The distinction of these two forms is discussed, and it is suggested that among well preserved specimens only very occasional variants cause any difficulty in identification. The shells referred to A. adamsi. s. lat. by Weir and Leitch from the base of the Similis-Pulchra Zone (1936) are not considered in this paper.(4) The relations of A. adamsi, A. hindi and A. warei are briefly discussed: in view of the limited distribution of the various species it is thought best for the present to retain the three specific names.

XVII.—Contributions to the Study of the Old Red Sandstone Flora of Scotland. VIII. On Arthrostigma, Psilophyton, and some associated Plant-remains from the Strathmore Beds of the Caledonian Lower Old Red Sandstone

It is well known that there are two distinct horizons in the Caledonian Lower Old Red Sandstone which contain abundant plant-remains (Evans, 1929). At the lower horizon of the Carmyllie and Cairnconnan Beds the flora consists, so far as is clearly known, of Pachytheca, Nematophyton, Parka, and one vascular plant, Zosterophyllum myretonianum (Lang, 1927). In certain greenish-grey flags and sandstones of the Strathmore Beds near the summit of the stratigraphical succession fragmentary plant-remains are abundant along a line stretching from Rosemount, south of Blairgowrie, through Murthly, Glenalmond, Callander, and Balloch, to near Brodick in Arran. From these beds a small but quite distinct assemblage of fossil plants is known. Pachytheca is clearly recorded. The well-defined remains of vascular plants have so far all been referred to Arthrostigma gracile, Dawson, and Psilophyton princeps, Dawson. References to Psilophyton robustius occur, but there is no evidence that the type of plant distinguished from Gaspé under that name has been found in the Strathmore Beds.