Rough Road Quarry (RRQ) (Cretaceous of the United States)

Also known as OMNH V801; Mussentuchit; FHSM

Where: Emery County, Utah (39.0° N, 111.0° W: paleocoordinates 40.3° N, 73.1° W)

• coordinate based on political unit

• small collection-level geographic resolution

When: Mussentuchit Member (Cedar Mountain Formation), Early/Lower Cenomanian (99.6 - 93.5 Ma)

• A radiometric age of 98.37 ± 0.07 Ma was obtained by the OMNH from volcanic ash within the Mussentuchit Member (Cifelli and others, 1997, 1999). Additional ages by Garrison and others (2007) ranging from 96.7 ± 0.5 to 98.2 ±0.6 Ma indicate that the Mussentuchit Member was deposited over an interval of 1.5 Ma during the early Cenomanian and supports a correlation with the siliceous marine Mowry Shale to the north, which is well-constrained from 40Ar/39Ar sanidine ages obtained from bentonite beds that bracket the Mowry in Wyoming; the basal Arrow Creek Bentonite is 98.5 ± 0.5 Ma and the capping Clay Spur Bentonite is 97.2 ± 0.7 Ma (Obradovich, 1993; Ogg and Hinnov, 2012; Sprinkel and others, 2012) near the base of the Upper Cretaceous. Tucker et al. 2020 also suggested a likely depositional age of ~96-94Ma for the Musseuntuchit member.

• bed-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: terrestrial; lithology not reported

Size classes: macrofossils, mesofossils

Collection methods: bulk, sieve,

Primary reference: M. E. Nelson and J. H. Madsen. 1985. Early Cretaceous mammals from central Utah. Geological Society of America, Rocky Mountain Section, Abstracts with Programs 17(4):258 [M. Carrano/M. Carrano]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 14407: authorized by John Alroy, entered by John Alroy on 21.09.1998, edited by Matthew Carrano

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

• see map of Cifelli and Madsen 1998
Mammalia
 Multituberculata -
Cedaromys parvus3 Eaton and Cifelli 2001 multituberculate
FHSM 10357
Cedaromys bestia3 Eaton and Nelson 1991 multituberculate
FHSM 10358
Paracimexomys robisoni4 Eaton and Nelson 1991 multituberculate
FHSM 10352, 10354-55
cf. Paracimexomys perplexus3 Eaton and Cifelli 2001 multituberculate
FHSM 10436-48
Ptilodontoidea indet.4 multituberculate
FHSM 10349; reID as C. parvus
Janumys erebos3 Eaton and Cifelli 2001 multituberculate
 Eutriconodonta - Triconodontidae
Astroconodon delicatus2 Cifelli and Madsen 1998 mammal
 Theriamorpha - Spalacotheriidae
Spalacotheridium noblei1 Cifelli and Madsen 1999 mammal
Reptilia
 Ornithischia -
 Theropoda -
Theropoda indet. Marsh 1881 theropod
"both adult and embroynic teeth"
 Loricata -
Crocodylia indet. crocodilian
 Squamata -
Lacertilia indet. Owen 1842 lizard
scutes
 Squamata - Polyglyphanodontidae
Bicuspidon numerosus6 Nydam and Cifelli 2002 squamates
 Testudinata -
Testudinata indet. Oppel 1811 turtle
Amphibia
 Temnospondyli - Albanerpetontidae
Albanerpetontidae indet.5 Fox and Naylor 1982 tetrapod
AMNH 27978-27980, 27972-27973
Actinopteri
 Teleostei -