Náttúrufræðingurinn - 2000, Page 27

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■ SUMMARY
The Late-Glacial Marine Fauna in
Rauðamelur, Southwest Iceland
In Rauðamelur on the Reykjanes Peninsula,
southwest Iceland, marine sand and gravel
sediments have been encountered from a warmer
period or interstadial during the Weichselian
about 35.000 BP, and a younger warm spell from
the Late Glacial 12.600 BP. The formation has
been interpreted as a bar deposited, the sedi-
ments brought into the sea by glacial melt water
from southeast. In the Late Glacial marine
sediments an invertebrate fauna has been col-
lected with a sponge (Suberites sp.), two barna-
cle species, Balanus balanus and B. hameri, and
a bivalve, Hiatella arctica. The fauna is a low
arctic-boreal assemblage of low diversity that
lived sublittorally, probably in water with nor-
mal salinity deeper than 13 m. It was on a rather
hard substratum of tillite and did not burrow in
the bottom. The assemblage is now preserved
under the over-hanging tillite which has pro-
tected the shell material from dissolution.
Marine sponges have not been found before as
fossils in Icelandic sediments, but remains of
fresh water sponges have been met with in Terti-
ary plant-bearing deposits at Brjánslækur in
northwest Iceland.
PóSTFANC HÖFUNDA / AuTHORS'ADDRESS
Ólöf E. Leifsdóttir
Netfang/e-mail: oel@rhi.hi.is
Leifur A. Símonarson
Netfang/e-mail: leifuras@raunvis.hi.is
Raunvísindastofnun Háskólans/
Science Institute
Jarðfræðahús Háskólans
IS-101 Reykjavík
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