fieldwork

The Senèze Research Project




Dicerorhinus etruscus etruscus

The Senèze Research Project is a collaborative Franco-American investigation of a two-million-year-old paleontological site yielding fossil mammals in central France. The project is co-directed by Graduate Center Professor Eric Delson and Martine Faure and Claude Guérin (Universités de Lyon), with the collaboration of a dozen senior colleagues and numerous student participants. Bonnie Blackwell (Williams College) and Evelyne Debard (Lyon) are in charge of geochronological dating and stratigraphic geology, respectively, while the three co-directors are specifically concerned with mammalian paleontology.


Senèze was first recognized in 1892 when part of a fossil elephant was discovered by local workmen. The site is located inside an extinct volcano cone which exploded about 2.5 million years ago and then filled with water and mud over the succeeding half-million years. Fossils (T) are found in the upper levels of the filled-in crater lake (maar).

Major excavations were undertaken between 1910 and 1940 expecially by local farmers, such as Pierre Philis, who worked with and sold fossils to the University of Lyon and museums of natural history in Paris and in Basel, Switzerland. This site has yielded about 15,000 mammalian fossils belonging to at least 30 species. One specimen was the nearly complete skull of a then-new form of fossil monkey (Paradolichopithecus), which is of special interest to Dr. Delson.


Fossils previously recovered at Senèze include the nearly complete skeletons of several large deer.

Although Senèze is generally agreed to represent the reference locality for an interval of time between roughly 2.1 to 1.6 million years ago across all of Europe and western Asia, no significant study has been undertaken there in over 60 years. The Senèze Research Project seeks to:
  • better determine the local stratigraphic sequence;
  • clarify the age of the mammals both by comparison to those found at other sites and in terms of actual years through application of a variety of dating techniques (ESR, potassium-argon and paleomagnetism);
  • understand the processes of site formation (taphonomy); and
  • collect new fossils, especially of rarer species, and understand the environments in which they lived.


    • Senèze (S) is located in central France, roughly between the small cities of Clermont-Ferrand (3) and Le Puy en Velay (4), farther from Lyon (2) or Paris (1). A preliminary visit to the region in 2000 led to the relocation of some fossiliferous points. A large group worked for a month in 2001, digging three geological trenches, sampling for pollen, paleomagnetics, and especially background radiation levels for the ESR dating. The trenches, dug by a backhoe and finished by hand, were located slightly west of the small hamlet of Senèze. They were dug on land owned by local farmers who gave permission for their fields and cows to be disturbed for a month.






    The trenched areas and geological sections.




    Four sets of rhinoceros bones.
    Much of the limb skeleton of a rhinoceros was found almost by accident in one of the trenches when part of it was struck by a backhoe. These bones were carefully drawn as they were cleaned and removed, and each element was photographed in place.


    The project's base camp was located near these trenches, as were three small areas where geological sections were studied. Most of the older fossils were collected in the "classic" Senèze ravine, to which the team did not have access, but another ravine, owned by the Paris museum, may yield some material. Additional areas will be further examined in future years, and the trenched fields will be excavated over a large surface area in search of fossils. In 2002 another small team went back in to the Senèze site to recover more ESR background-measuring devices (dosimeters) buried for a year and also to locate areas for further excavation. Funding is now being requested for continuing this work.



    The U.S. crew in 2001 included many CUNY Graduate Center Anthropology Program students and faculty.
    From left: Dr. John Van Couvering (Adjunct Professor), Karen Baab, Dr. Stephen Frost (PhD 2001), Suzanne Hagell, Dr. Eric Delson, Kieran McNulty, Tara Peburn, and Terence Capellini.


    This research has been supported by a variety of granting agencies, especially the National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, the PSC-CUNY faculty research program, the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles (Service régional de l'Archéologie), Conseil Général du Département de la Haute-Loire, and the UMR "Paléoenvironnements et paléobiosphère" du CNRS.


    back to Fieldwork home page

    last modified 12.29.02
    comments