First occurrence of the genus Zonocypris (Ostracoda) in the Pleistocene of Western Europe (Portugal)

Abstract

Abstract. The Recent distribution of the freshwater ostracod genus Zonocypris G. W. Müller, 1898 (type-species Zonocypris madagascariensis Müller, 1898) is restricted to Africa, Madagascar and, occasionally, the eastern Mediterranean (Turkey: Zonocypris inconspicua Schafer, 1952; Zonocypris costata (Vávra, 1897); and pers. comm. K. Martens and O. Külköylüoǧlu).In the Miocene, this genus has been reported from Morocco (Zonocypris maghrebinensis Helmdach, 1988) and in the Plio-Pleistocene, from India (Zonocypris costata, in Bhatia & Khosla, 1967; Singh, 1977), Bulgaria (Zonocypris membranae membranae Livental, in Suzin 1956, and Zonocypris membranae quadricella Stancheva, in Stancheva, 1966), Turkey (Zonocypris membranae, in Tunoglu, 2001), Greece (Paracypretta? sp. Mostafawi, 1988, Zonocypris sp. 6 Mostafawi, 1994b and Zonocypris rippeae Mostafawi, 1994a) and Russia (Zonocypris membranae, in Suzin, 1956; Mandelstam & Schneider, 1963). Species attributed to Zonocypris by Nazik & Gökçen (1992) from the Lower Miocene of Turkey most likely do not belong to the genus Zonocypris but to Virgatocypris Malz & Moayedpour, 1973.Recent field work in Algarve, southern Portugal (Cabral et al., 2003), allowed the presence of the genus Zonocypris to be recorded, represented by a species closely related to the Recent species Zonocypris costata (Vávra, 1897) in a Pleistocene lacustrine ostracod assemblage at Boliqueime.Thus, the recognition of Zonocypris cf. costata (Pl. 1) in the Pleistocene of southern Portugal is the first documented occurrence of this genus in post-Cretaceous deposits of Western Europe.