Modern death assemblages provide insights about the early stages of fossilization and useful ecological information about the species inhabiting the ecosystem. The results of taphonomic monitoring of modern vertebrate carcasses and bones from Doñana National Park, a Mediterranean coastal ecosystem in Andalusia, Spain, are presented. Ten different habitats were surveyed. Half of them occur in active depositional environments (marshland, lake margin, river margin, beach and dunes).

The sequence of cheek teeth mineralization, eruption, and replacement of an extinct horse species is here documented with radiological techniques for the first time thanks to the exceptional preservation of Hipparion sp. mandibles from Cerro de los Batallones (Madrid Basin, Spain). The sequence of dental ontogeny in mammals provides valuable insights about life history traits, such as the pace of growth, and about the mode of formation of fossiliferous assemblages.