PBDB Collection

0.5 km North of Quebrada El Picache and 50 m East of Chiguaje fault (Miocene of Venezuela)

Also known as Urumaco; MCZ-77-72v

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

• The geological units from which the specimens were obtained are the middle and upper members of the Urumaco Formation of Venezuela. These units have been recently summarized in the Léxico estratigráfico de Venezuela (1997).

• bed-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 middle member of the Urumaco Formation consists of claystone and sand. The gray claystone is microfossiliferous, and the brown claystone contains vertebrate remains such as reptiles, mammals, marine and freshwater fish, and also coprolites and wood (Díaz de Gamero & Linares, 1989). The limestone changes from conchiferous sandstones to consolidated coquina limestone. In the lower half of this middle member, an abundant and diverse marine mollusk fauna exists in a sandy matrix. This matrix also contains elasmobranch teeth and teleostean otoliths.

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 143321: authorized by Philip Mannion, entered by Philip Mannion on 22.04.2013

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Show authors, comments, and common names

Reptilia
Crocodylia - Alligatoridae	Purussaurus sp.², Purussaurus mirandai Purussaurus sp.² Barbosa Rodrigues 1892 crocodilian MCNC-URU-90-72V Purussaurus mirandai Aguilera et al. 2006 crocodilian MCNC-URU-76-72V (mandible)
Crocodylia - Gavialidae	Gryposuchus croizati n. sp.¹ Gryposuchus croizati n. sp.¹ Riff and Aguilera 2008 crocodilian MCN-URU-2002-77 - type (complete skull with associated mandibles)

¹Riff and Aguilera 2008; ²Scheyer and Delfino 2016