Excavations in the Bruges’ Medieval outer ports of Hoeke and Monnikerede, located along the Zwin tidal inlet, revealed numerous rounded cobbles of exotic geological provenance among which were two specimens of remarkable mineralogical composition. An interdisciplinary study combining archeological, geological, petrographic-geochemical, and historical research has demonstrated their Mediterranean, i.e., Italian, provenance. A first stone is identified as Carrara marble originating from the alluvial fans of the Apuan Alps, deposited along the Versilian coast near the Renaissance towns of Lucca, Pisa, and Genoa. The second cobble is determined as a bioclastic calcarenite limestone from the Apulian shores. Both finds are interpreted as part of the non-saleable ballast once put in the holds of Italian carracks and galleys that touched the Flemish ports during the late thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. As such, both seemingly ordinary objects constitute a rare material and lithological testimony of an important late Medieval commercial network between the Mediterranean and North Sea coasts. Furthermore, the very rare occurrence of these Mediterranean cobbles compared to thousands of Scando-Baltic and Anglo-Scottish ballast stones in the whole of the Bruges outer harbor area can be related to differences in maritime traffic frequency and sheer commercial volumes. Also, the nature of the ballast itself and the ballasting procedures are important, the whole making Mediterranean ballast stones considerably less detectable in the Bruges’ harbors than their North-European equivalents.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2022
The study of the global mass extinction event at the Cretaceous–Palaeogene (K/Pg) boundary can aid in understanding patterns of selective extinction, and survival and dynamics of ecosystem recovery. Outcrops in the Maastrichtian type area (south-east Netherlands, north-east Belgium) comprise a stratigraphically expanded K/Pg boundary succession that offers a unique opportunity to study marine ecosystem recovery within the first few thousand years following the mass extinction event. A quantitative analysis was performed on systematically sampled macrofossils of the topmost Maastrichtian and lowermost Danian strata at the former Ankerpoort-Curfs quarry (Geulhem), which represent ‘snapshots’ of the latest Cretaceous and earliest Palaeogene marine ecosystems, respectively. Molluscs in particular are diverse and abundant in the studied succession. Regional ecosystem changes across the K/Pg boundary are relatively minor, showing a decline in suspension feeders, accompanied by an ecological shift to endobenthic molluscs. The earliest Paleocene gastropod assemblage retains many ‘Maastrichtian’ features and documents a fauna that temporarily survived into the Danian. The shallow, oligotrophic carbonate platform in this area was inhabited by taxa that were adapted to low nutrient levels and resistant to starvation. As a result, the local taxa were less affected by the short-lived detrimental conditions related to K/Pg boundary perturbations, such as darkness, cooling, starvation and ocean acidification. This resulted in relatively high survival rates, which enabled rapid recolonization and recovery of marine faunas in the Maastrichtian type area
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RBINS Staff Publications 2019
