PaleoBios

Toxochelys latiremis Cope, 1873 is currently thought to be one of the oldest members of the clade originating from the last common ancestor of all extant species of marine-adapted turtles (Chelonioidea). Fossil material of this species has been reported from numerous lower Campanian marine formations across North America; however, reported occurrences have been conspicuously absent from the upper Santonian-to-lower Campanian Mooreville Chalk of Alabama and Mississippi, USA, the type stratum for the only other valid species within the genus, Toxochelys moorevillensis Zangerl, 1953. The apparent absence of T. latiremis from the Mooreville Chalk, and from the southern expanse of the Mississippi Embayment, has made T. latiremis one of the few outliers in previously proposed paleobiogeographic models for marine turtles in the Late Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway. This absence also confounded attempts at reconciling the distribution and phylogeny of these taxa. Here we report the first material of T. latiremis identified from the Mooreville Chalk of Alabama, which represents the southern-most occurrence of this taxon. The discovery of this species in the Mooreville Chalk of Alabama helps to reconcile the previously hypothesized paleobiogeography of North American Late Cretaceous chelonioids with their fossil occurrence and provides the first evidence for overlapping ranges of the only two currently recognized species of Toxochelys.

An annotated list of Cenozoic, fossiliferous marine formations from western Oregon and Washington State, U.S.A., and southwestern Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, has been assembled. This chart is a product of the Eastern Pacific Invertebrate Communities of the Cenozoic (EPICC) Thematic Collections Network project that is digitizing over 1.6 million Cenozoic marine invertebrate fossils from the eastern Pacific margin (Alaska to Chile) housed in the network’s museums. The chart includes formation names currently recognized by Geolex, the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Geologic Map Database. Also included on the chart are prior names, original authors, biozonations, ages from the International Chronostratigraphic Chart (ICC), and references for the most recent age calls.

The Mascall fauna is a well-known middle Miocene (Barstovian) mammalian assemblage in the Pacific Northwest. It has been collected for over 100 years and collecting intensity has increased since the establishment in 1975 of a national monument enclosing the type area of the formation. Despite its importance to biostratigraphy, biogeography of Barstovian taxa, and paleoecological studies, the fauna at the type locality has not been taxonomically examined in more than 50 years. Evaluation and classification of the stratigraphy of the Mascall Formation (Bestland et al. 2008) has prompted a faunal revision in order to place taxa within the new stratigraphic framework. Here we report on the fauna from the type area of the Mascall Formation in central Oregon, and conclude that 20 taxa are new to the fauna, and several taxa previously assigned to distinct species are synonymized. We also place specimens and taxa within a robust stratigraphic framework, calibrated with new U-Pb radioisotopic ages for the Mascall Tuff (15.122±0.017 Ma), the most fossiliferous layer in the formation, and the Kangaroo Tuff (13.564±0.018 Ma), the upper most tuff in the formation.

The 2018 Program with Abstracts volume for the Western Association of Vertebrate Paleontologists 52nd Annual Meeting held at Dixie State University, St. George, Utah, USA.

A new, enigmatic chilodontid gastropod with distinctive periodic varices is described as Calliovarica oregonensis. It is based on ten specimens from slope deposits of the early late Eocene Nestucca Formation on the coastal Cascadia margin of present day Oregon, U.S.A. It is the last appearance of a Mesozoic group of epifaunal basal gastropods with periodic varices. It is the third species in a Cenozoic genus previously known only from the early Eocene Lodo Formation in California and the late Paleocene to early Eocene Red Bluff Tuff in New Zealand. The type species, C. eocensis, is refigured to clarify the nature of the axial varices as well as a terminal thickening and flaring of the apertural lip immediately following deposition of the final varix. Detailed preservation of microstructure in the nacreous layers of crushed and disintegrating shell fragments demonstrates the value of collecting material typically left behind in the field. Calliovarica oregonensis n. sp. is part of a poorly understood molluscan fauna that lived during an unusual paleoclimatic interval immediately prior to global cooling and extinctions in the late Eocene. It also thrived in an unusual volcano-sedimentary interval at the onset of subduction at the Cascadia margin. The tectonic setting provides a unique snapshot of a depositional environment receiving periodic influxes of ash from the young volcanic arc to the east and periodic basalt intrusions from the underlying asthenosphere into the forerarc over a hotspot or through slab window emplacement. Links between biofacies and lithofacies demonstrate the ability of paleontology and geology to provide reciprocal illumination, especially in dynamic settings with no modern counterparts. The link between local persistence of relict Mesozoic taxa and localized tectonic events merits further integrative investigation.

The Upper Triassic Dockum Group of Garza County, Texas (lower, middle, and upper Cooper Canyon Formation) captures the radiation of Triassic non-marine tetrapods by preserving a variety of Late Triassic taxa from the southwestern United States. Our understanding of the vertebrate assemblage from these strata largely comes from a single site, the Post Quarry (lower Cooper Canyon Formation), with previous research documenting a variety of temnospondyls, sphenodontians, non-archosauriform archosauromorphs, and archosauriforms including a phytosaur, three species of aetosaurs, a poposauroid, a rauisuchid, a crocodylomorph, and several dinosauromorphs. To more completely reconstruct the vertebrate assemblage of the Dockum Group of Garza County we use an apomorphy-based approach to identify morphologically similar disarticulated and fragmentary elements from a variety of localities that span the entire Cooper Canyon Formation (Norian-Rhaetian), allowing assignments from the large clade level to the species level. Many skeletal elements are incomplete yet diagnostic and are assigned to the least inclusive clade if discrete character states do not allow for an unambiguous species-level identification. We identify new specimens referable to numerous clades including Tanystropheidae, Allokotosauria + Prolacerta + Archosauriformes, Vancleavea + Litorosuchus, Phytosauria, Paracrocodylomorpha, Dinosauriformes, and Saurischia, in addition to additional species identifications of the aetosaur Scutarx deltatlyus, and the dinosauromorph Dromomeron gregorii. Our study of this material demonstrates the utility of an apomorphy-based approach in making testable and repeatable observations for identifying small, isolated fragmentary fossil tetrapod material to reconstruct a more accurate faunal hypothesis for a portion of the Late Triassic of Texas. Previous claims of the earliest dinosaurs from near the base of the Dockum Group do not pass the apomorphy-based identification test, and the question of whether the oldest known North American dinosaurs are present in the Chinle Formation or Dockum Group can be resolved by utilizing vertebrate biostratigraphic correlation. Our revision of these fossil assemblages supports the hypothesis that early diapsids, early archosauromorphs, and non-dinosaurian dinosauromorphs were more common, diverse, and widespread in low latitudes during this time than previously thought.

Endemic genera of shallow-marine gastropods in the Cretaceous Northeast Pacific Subprovince (NEP), extending from Alaska to northern Baja California Sur, Mexico, are tabulated and discussed in detail for the first time. None are known in Lower Cretaceous or Cenomanian strata, but 43 genera, nearly two-thirds of which are neogastropods, are recognized in Upper Cretaceous strata. Their first appearance was at the beginning of the Turonian, which coincided with the warmest time of the Cretaceous and one of its highest sea-level stands. Fourteen new subtropical endemic genera appeared then, and 10 (71%) were neogastropods. Tethyan-influenced thermophilic mollusks (nerineid, acteonellid, neritid, and cypraeoidean gastropods, as well as rudistid bivalves) were present. A turnover at the Turonian/Coniacian boundary occurred when cooler waters migrated southward, resulting in the subtropical endemics being abruptly and nearly completely replaced by 10 warm-temperate new endemic neogastropods, which commonly had long-living lineages persisting through the Campanian or early Maastrichtian. Eight (80%) of these new genera were neogastropods. During these cooler water times in the Coniacian and nearly all of the Santonian, there was an absence (“gap”) of Tethyan-influenced and other thermophile mollusks. New endemic genera, were added during an origination event in the early Campanian and also during another one in the late Campanian. Fewer and fewer new neogastropod genera appeared during each of these origination events, whereas new endemic genera of non-neogastropods increased. Rudistids and thermophilic mollusks also returned in the Campanian. Most of the post-Turonian endemic genera went extinct at a turnover at the end of the early Maastrichtian (=“Middle Maastrichtian Event”), rather than at the K/Pg boundary mass-extinction event. Two new endemic genera, both neogastropods, originated just before the end of the Maastrichtian. They and three other Cretaceous endemic gastropod genera occur also in the NEP Cenozoic record, thereby imparting a somewhat transitional aspect between these two faunas. The tectonically transported fauna of the middle Albian Alisitos Formation in northern Baja California, Mexico is confirmed to have lived in the tropical-water Caribbean Biotic Province of the Tethyan Realm.

Machine learning is a formidable tool for pattern recognition in large datasets. We developed and expanded on these methods, applying machine learning pattern recognition to a problem in paleoanthropology and evolution. For decades, paleontologists have used the chimpanzee as a model for the chimpanzee-human last common ancestor (LCA) because they are our closest living primate relative. Using a large sample of extant and extinct primates, we tested the hypothesis that machine learning methods can accurately classify extant apes based on dental data. We then used this classification tool to observe the affinities between extant apes and Miocene hominoids. We assessed the discrimination accuracy of supervised learning algorithms when tasked with the classification of extant apes (n=175), using three types of data from the postcanine dentition: linear, 2-dimensional, and the morphological output of two genetic patterning mechanisms that are independent of body size: molar module component (MMC) and premolar-molar module (PMM) ratios. We next used the trained algorithms to classify a sample of fossil hominoids (n=95), treated as unknowns. Machine learning classifies extant apes with greater than 92% accuracy with linear and 2-dimensional dental measurements, and greater than 60% accuracy with the MMC and PMM ratios. Miocene hominoids are morphologically most similar in dental size and shape to extant chimpanzees. However, relative dental proportions of Miocene hominoids are more similar to extant gorillas and follow a strong trajectory through evolutionary time. Machine learning is a powerful tool that can discriminate between the dentitions of extant apes with high accuracy and quantitatively compare fossil and extant morphology. Beyond detailing applications of machine learning to vertebrate paleontology, our study highlights the impact of phenotypes of interest and the importance of comparative samples in paleontological studies.

The relatively recent discovery and contextualization of silesaurid and lagerpetid dinosauromorphs has led to a revolution in understanding the early evolutionary history of the dinosaurian lineage. Lagerpetids are known from North America and South America in Middle and Upper Triassic rocks, especially the Chinle Formation of New Mexico and the Dockum Group of Texas. Until now, only a single specimen of Dromomeron gregorii was known from the Upper Triassic Chinle Formation of Arizona. However, a new lagerpetid astragalus specimen (MNA V7237) from the Owl Rock Member of the Chinle Formation found on Ward Terrace in the Navajo Nation of Arizona is referred to Dromomeron romeri. MNA V7237 represents the youngest radioisotopically-dated record of Lagerpetidae, indicating that D. romeri persisted throughout the entire Norian (Otischalkian into the Apachean) in North America.

We describe a nearly complete skull and mandible of a subadult of Euclastes wielandi, a pan-cheloniid turtle recently recovered at the Jean and Ric Edelman Fossil Park at Rowan University in Mantua Township, New Jersey, which yields new information about the osteology, ontogeny, and intraspecific variation of this taxon. The specimen was collected from the earliest Danian Main Fossiliferous Layer (MFL) of the Hornerstown Formation. Although discovered immediately adjacent to remains of two pleurodires, Taphrosphys sulcatus and Bothremys sp., the skull and mandible can be definitively assigned to Pan-Cheloniidae based on its V-shaped basisphenoid and rod-like rostrum basisphenoidale. Among three pan-cheloniid taxa known from the MFL, the specimen is assigned to Eu. wielandi based on its low skull with dorsally-directed orbits, symphyseal swelling in the mandibular triturating surface, and high dorsum sellae. Comparisons with other specimens of Eu. wielandi and adults and juveniles of other pan-cheloniids revealed variations in the type and timing of cranial ontogenetic changes in the clade, as well as anatomical traits subject to intraspecific variation, such as the depth of the sella turcica, paths of the foramina nervi hypoglossi, and development of a precolumellar fossa. The relative contribution of the frontal to the orbital margin and precise path of the prefrontal-supraorbital scale sulcus are subject to individual variation in Eu. wielandi, as well as ontogenetic variation and bilateral asymmetry in other cryptodirans, signifying that the widespread use of frontal retraction in taxon diagnoses and as a phylogenetic character should be reconsidered. As in multiple other taxa, the mandibular triturating surface expands through growth in Eu. wielandi, demonstrating that increased durophagy with age was a common life strategy among Cryptodira.