Holocene climate as reflected by a malacological sequence at Verrières, France

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Abstract
Though numerous analyses have been made of Holocene pollen sequences, they come from similar environmental contexts, mainly peat deposits. Land snails can provide good palaeoecological and palaeoclimatical data in different drier environmental settings. The Verrières deposits, located in the Seine Valley, southeast of Paris, provide rich and abundant malacofaunas. We compare the well–defined local biostratigraphy with other mollusc stratigraphies from Burgundy, the closet site to the studied region. Multivariate analysis of the malacofaunas indicates that temperature and moisture did not always vary in parallel during the Holocene. On the other hand, Verrières malacofaunas reflect the main Holocene changes, as observed in the classical pollen series, confirming the reliability of the local biostratigraphy. The younger Dryas in Verrières was cold and cry. This was followed by the Preboreal phase, which is not well preserved at Verrières, but shows cool and humid conditions. The Boreal and Subboreal both show a cold and moist event bounded by two temperature phases. The Atlantic is also divided into two temperate phases by a cool and moist event. The Subatlantic shows temperature oscillations with cool peaks, but moisture shows a continuous trend to dryness.