Miocene of Finland? Discoveries of Neogene microfossil assemblages and mammal fossils from northern Europe

While there is a rich Miocene fossil record from Europe, it is heavily biased to areas south of 50°N, and Miocene records from northern Europe are very scarce. Especially Fennoscandia has traditionally been considered to lack practically all evidence from the Neogene mainly due to heavy glacial erosion during the Pleistocene. However, during recent years, a few isolated, re-deposited finds of Miocene mammal fossils from Finland and Sweden have somewhat changed the situation. While the original provenance of these finds is uncertain, they most likely originate from eroded Miocene sediments within the Fennoscandian shield itself, in any case broadly representing northern Europe. A proboscidean humerus fragment from Suomusjärvi, Finland, is considered Miocene in age because of microfossil contents of the attached sediment remnant, and it has been tentatively identified as Deinotherium sp. Microfossils from the Suomusjärvi specimen indicate a warm, humid freshwater shore environment, broadly similar to the swamp-forest dominated plant communities from Miocene deposits of Denmark and Iceland. Molars of a tetraconodontine suid and a gomphothere from Sweden add to the Miocene finds from Fennoscandia, although the provenance of the latter is still uncertain.