A review of Macoma balthica (L) as a stratigraphic marker in the Pleistocene sediments of the southern North Sea Basin

The first occurrence and presence of the bivalve Macoma balthica in the Pleistocene shallow marine sediments (Crags) of East Anglia has long been used to characterise the youngest “Weybourne” or “Wroxham” Crag Formation of Early to early Middle Pleistocene age. A review of recent work on the morphological variation and genetic lineages of living populations of the species and of work on fossil discoveries in East Greenland suggests that the current palaeontological species definition is too narrow, that the species arrived in the Atlantic about 2.4 Ma and much earlier than is envisaged from the studies of the North Sea Basin, and that there were several trans-Arctic migrations of the species during the Pleistocene. This paper reviews these findings and concludes that: (i) detailed morphometric analyses of fossil Macoma species from the Crag need to be undertaken and the species definitions comprehensively reviewed to take account of the morphological and genetic variation seen in modern populations; (ii) detailed morphometric analysis of modern M. balthica should be undertaken and tied to the different genetic lineages, and (iii) the current palaeontological definition of Macoma balthica should not be relied on as the basis for a First Appearance Datum (FAD) in the Southern North Sea basin.