Bovenpleistocene zoogdieren van Oudenaarde Donk (België), fossiele vliegepoppen uit de Vlaamse Valleien elders en nog een en ander over de Vlaamse Vallei

The paper gives an inventory of the Upper Pleistocene mammals from Oudenaarde-Donk, a new site in the Flemish Valley. The assemblage is characterized by a rather high frequency of steppewisent, reflecting perhaps a less biased collecting than elsewhere in the ”valley” and perhaps a true dominance of bison in the sampled living communities of the Last Glacial. In the Flemish Valley, mammal remains have been found four times in associaton with puparia of the subarctic blowfly Protophormia terraenovae (Zemst, two finds; Dendermonde; Hofstade) up to now. Fossil associations of remains of blowflies and mammals are very rare, as shown by their inventory (Table 2). Those of the Flemish Valley can be explained by a taphonomic scenario involving catastrophic winter mortality of large herbivores, myiasis very early in spring by the already mentioned blowfly, transport and rapid burial of affected body parts in coarse fluviatile deposits during the spring thaw period. A similar scenario would be applicable for the Dutch (Valberg) and German finds (Bottrop, two finds; Löhne-Gohfeld; Eich; Bocholt), which are all derived from fluviatile deposits of Last Glacial age in major river basins. The find from the North Sea can be interpreted as circumstancial evidence for the existence there of Pleistocene features and deposits comparable with those of the Flemish Valley. The other associations are due to special conditions for fossilisation (Geiseltal; East Turkana), rapid burial in tar seep (Rancho La Brea; Binagady) or in a kettle hole (Condover). Attention is drawn to some avian finds from the Flemish Valley, and to Middle Palaeolithic artefacts, including a possible bone skiffle. Neandertalman visited the Flemish Valley, but few of mammal remains found are to be attributed to his hunting activities. On the contrary, he may have come to the valley in early spring, because he knew that he would then have access to large game carcasses.