Devínska Kobyla – a window into the Middle Miocene shallow-water marine environments of the Central Paratethys (Vienna Basin, Slovakia)

Middle Miocene strata exposed at Devínska Kobyla Hill (Malé Karpaty Mts) document the temporal and spatial changes in shallow-water environments of the northern Vienna Basin during the Late Badenian and Early Sarmatian. Middle Miocene deposits of the Studienka and Holí formations border this hill essentially along its full perimeter. The present overview of 16 localities based on published observations and new sampling shows that the Middle Miocene deposits contain species-rich micro- and macrofaunal assemblages as well as nannoflora. This contribution includes lists of all marine faunal (except tetrapods) and microfloral taxa known to date. The localities can be divided into three groups on the basis of their lithology and the abundance of molluscs and foraminifers in fossil assemblages: Devín area, Dúbravka area and Devínska Nová Ves area. On the basis of foraminifers the localities in the Dúbravka area (Dúbravská hlavica, Pektenová lavica, Stary lom, partly Fuchsov lom) can be assigned to the Early Sarmatian (based on benthic taxa), whereas the localities in the Devín ( ibeni ny vrch, títová, Terasy, Lomnická, Lingulová lavica, Glosusová lavica) and Devínska Nová Ves (Sandberg 1–2, Maly Sandberg, Waitov lom, Glavica, tokeravská vápenka-Bonanza) areas are predominantly of the Late Badenian age (based on benthic and planktonic taxa). However, molluscs imply that the deposits from the Dúbravka area are of Late Badenian age. The differences in the estimates of stratigraphic age between on molluscs and foraminifers can be explained with the persistence of typically Badenian mollusc taxa in the marginal parts of the Central Paratethys Sea during the Middle Miocene. For every studied locality palaeoenvironmental conditions based mostly on molluscs and foraminifers are inferred.