El Picache (Miocene of Venezuela)

Also known as Urumaco

Where: Falcon, Venezuela (11.2° N, 70.2° W: paleocoordinates 10.9° N, 68.8° W)

• coordinate stated in text

• outcrop-level geographic resolution

When: Upper Member (Urumaco Formation), Late/Upper Miocene (11.6 - 5.3 Ma)

• member-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: fluvial-deltaic; brown, gray claystone and sandstone

• The paleoenvironments are interpreted as inner sub-littoral and coastal lagoon enviroments with riverine and estuarine influence (Díaz de Gamero, 1996).
• The upper member of the Urumaco Formation comprises grey to brown, often limey claystones with thin intercalated and locally shelly sandstones

Size class: macrofossils

Collected by MCZ (B. Patterson), UCV (J. Royo-Gomez), UNEFM (O. Aguilera), UFAC (J. Bocquetin-Villanueva) and AMU (R. Sanchez) in 1958-2003

Primary reference: O. A. Aguilera, D. Riff, and J. Bocquentin-Villanueva. 2006. A new giant Purussaurus (Crocodyliformes, Alligatoridae) from the Upper Miocene Urumaco Formation, Venezuela. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 4(3):221-232 [P. Mannion/P. Mannion]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 143319: authorized by Philip Mannion, entered by Philip Mannion on 22.04.2013, edited by Evangelos Vlachos and Juan Carrillo

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Show authors, comments, and common names
Reptilia
 Crocodylia - Alligatoridae
Purussaurus mirandai
Purussaurus mirandai Aguilera et al. 2006 crocodilian
MCC URU-115-72V (premaxilla and maxilla)
 Testudines - Podocnemididae
Bairdemys winklerae n. sp.2
Bairdemys winklerae n. sp.2 Gaffney et al. 2008 sideneck turtle
AMU-CURS 98, skull
Mammalia
 Rodentia - Neoepiblemidae
Phoberomys sp.1, Phoberomys pattersoni1
Phoberomys sp.1 Kraglievich 1926 caviomorph
AMU-CURS 35
Phoberomys pattersoni1 Bondesio and Bocquentin Villanueva 1988 caviomorph
AMU-CURS 255, skull
1Carrillo and Sánchez-Villagra 2015; 2Gaffney et al. 2008