A new fossil micromammal locality was discovered within the framework of the EU VAMP (Vertical Anatolian Movements Project) Topo-Europe Project. The locality is an old quarry situated in the area of the village Gökler, in the southeastern part of the Kazan Basin, N of Ankara. The section is characterized by few coal horizons and by alternate whitish, greenish and pinkish silty mudrocks, partly laminated. During summer 2009 field campaign, the section was sampled for ostracodes, pollen, small mammals and for magnetostratigraphy. Unfortunately, the signal from paleomagnetic samples was weak, but few samples showed normal polarity. Ostracodes are abundant through all the section and they are typical for a lacustrine environment.
The testing samples for small mammals came from two horizons rich in organic material and yielded very promising content of small mammals. Both rodents and insectivores were recovered. The insectivores are not yet processed whereas here we present the first data about the rodents. The assemblage of rodents is characterized by the dominance of three species of Eumyarion. Very abundant is also Democricetodon aff. franconicus, whereas Cricetodon sp., and Vallaris sp. are not very common. Gliridae are represented by Glirudinus cf. haramiensis. The presence of three species of Eumyarion is very unusual. The only locality with so diversified genus Eumyarion is Sabuncubeli (lower part of MN3). During the MN4, in Anatolia, small forms of the genus Eumyarion were replaced by Anomalomys. The general composition of the fauna shows very close relationships with the Keseköy locality (lower part of MN3). Therefore, we conclude that the age of the Gökler assemblage best fits to the lower part of MN3. During the next field season we are planning to perform main sampling of the locality and we are expecting to recover more specimens and to get a more detailed frame of the Gökler assemblage.
Acknowledgements: We are grateful to Dr. Hans de Bruijn from University Utrecht (Netherlands) for the possibility to compare our material with findings from Anatolia. This study was supported by grants EUROCORE programme Topo-Europe VAMP ESF-EC-009-07 and VEGA 1/0483/10.