Late Pleistocene-Holocene fossils from Mirim Lake, Southern Brazil, and their paleoenvironmental significance

Abstract

Mirim Lake is located in the southern Brazilian/northeastern Urugayan coastal plain. Fossils of mollusks have been discovered on its shores since the XIX century, and in recent years, several new remains of invertebrates and vertebrates have been found in the Brazilian area of the lake that provide insights on the geological evolution and environmental changes that affected this lake during the late Quaternary. In this first of two papers describing these new findings we focus on vertebrates, consisting of aquatic and terrestrial taxa. The former include the first associated fossil remains of one adult and one juvenile balaenid whale known in Brazil, probably a female and calf of the southern right whale (baleia-franca) Eubalaena australis, besides bull sharks (Carcharhinus leucas) also recorded for the first time in southern Brazil, rays (Dasyatidae and Myliobatidae) and teleost fishes. The fossils of terrestrial vertebrates include several extinct mammals, found on the margins and retrieved from the lake bottom by fishermen at depths of up to 4 m. One molar tooth of Toxodon discovered in situ in one irrigation channel yielded an electron spin resonance (ESR) age of 68 ± 13 ka, in agreement with an age of 32.8 ± 5.1 ka obtained in quartz grains extracted from a caliche nodule collected above that fossil and dated by optically-stimulated luminescence (OSL). Other quartz grains in the same nodule that yielded ages of 16.9 ± 2.5 ka indicate partial dissolution of the caliche by increased rainfall at the beginning of the last glacialinterglacial transition (Termination I) . The lake was invaded by marine waters and organisms during the Holocene sea-level highstand of +3 m around 5–6 ka b2k through paleo-connections with the Atlantic Ocean, becoming a paleo-lagoon. At that time coastal waters were warmer than today, as indicated by the presence of the tropical shark C. leucas. The ESR and OSL ages indicate chronocorrelation with the Pleistocene fossil-bearing Santa Vitória Formation that outcrops to the east. The fossil and sedimentary records indicate that the geological evolution and environmental conditions of the lake were controlled by climate and sea-level oscillations related to glacial-interglacial cycles.