Csarnota locality

Locality no. 7 of Osztramos, a crevice thought to represent the oldest Pleistocene locality of Hungary, because of its similarities with the Csarnota locality is also described. 

There are few remnants of this substage in Hungary apart from a few fissure faunas (nos. 1, 2, and 3 of Csarnota, locality no. 7 of Osztramos and the travertine of Sutto), all Pleistocene transitional faunas, only a single record from bore samples in the basin sediment of the Great Hungarian Plain (Mindszent, 650 m) testifies to this phase. 

Three of the four vertebrate fossil localities ca. 1.5 km south of the village of Csarnota are undoubtedly of the Csarnota layer. This locality lies in the westernmost part of the Villany mountains in southern Hungary (Fig. 5), on the flat ridge of Cserhegy, and comprises pillars of red clay formed in limestone of the Middle Triassic (Anisian) which had been left by quarrymen as dead rock in small dispersed quarries. 

Picture 1. The cave of locality no. 4 of Csarnota (photo by Fejfar). 

The material from sites nos. 1 and 3 at Csarnota is negligible in comparison with that of no. 2, and it is not readily suited to revision because of the older collections and identifications. However, as regards age in the geological sense, the material from all three localities represents the same stratum, whereas locality no. 4 is of different age, as shown by the first pilot collections (Picture 1). 

It is instructive to compare the fauna lists of locality no. 2 of Csarnota and locality no. 7 of Osztramos, since the former lies at a latitude of 45°53 and the latter at 48°31 Csarnota being in the sub-Mediterranean and Osztramos in the Carpathian climatic zone. 

The stratigraphical nature of the fauna is similar to that of locality no. 5 of Bere-mend, and is thus transitionary between Csarnota no. 2 and VilMny no. 3. Here Dolomys is completely absent, from which one may infer that the age of the fauna is somewhat younger than that of the other two faunas. Besides the above-mentioned antilope finds (Tragospira), worthy of note is the occurrence of the eomyid Estramomys simplex Janossy in the Villdny mountains, an extinct Tertiary form described from... 

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