Book review

This attractive book continues Marquet’s studies on the predominantly Pliocene mollusc faunas from various temporary excavations W and NW of Antwerp. In the first part (published 1998) the gastropods were treated, now we see the chitons and the first part of the bivalves and it is a pleasure to see what progress was made, and how well-known these fauna’s in fact are already: among the 60 species found (4 chitons, 56 bivalves) just 6 are new for the fauna, 3 of which are introduced as new taxa (2 species, 1 subspecies). After the “Introduction” there is a chapter on “New stratigraphical observations”, giving information on the temporary exposures in between Kallo and Doel. No complete sections are measured, the author restricts himself mainly to comparisons with earlier described outcrops, but is sometimes rather careless in his terminology. For instance, when talking about the Petaloconchus level of the Kattendijk Formation (p. 2) he writes that “This formation disappeared completely to the north-east”, where he obviously means ‘this level disappeared ....’