The late Miocene continentalization of the Guadix Basin (southern Spain) reconsidered: A comment on Hüsing et al. (2010)

Hüsing et al. (2010: Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology 291, 167-179) made an approximation to the age of the closure of the Betic Seaway through the Guadix Basin during the late Miocene, on the basis of integrated paleontological (foraminifera and micromammals) and magnetostratigraphic data from the marine-continental section of La Lancha. They provide very interesting information that contributes to understand the chronology of the marine to continental transition in the basin, but we would like to comment some inaccuracies in the interpretation of the age of the oldest continental levels of the studied section. Moreover, we discuss several recently described late Miocene continental faunas from the Guadix Basin, such as Negratín-1 and Rambla de Chimeneas-3, which were not considered by Hüsing et al. for their interpretations. Finally, we review the age of the site of Salinas, originally assigned to MN12 and discussed by Hüsing et al., but which had already been reconsidered by other authors who concluded that the existence of middle Turolian mammal faunas in this basin cannot be demonstrated.