Badger Creek, Fremont County (Carboniferous of the United States)

Where: Fremont County, Colorado (38.5° N, 105.9° W: paleocoordinates 1.4° N, 35.2° W)

• coordinate based on nearby landmark

• small collection-level geographic resolution

When: Sangre de Cristo Formation, Missourian (306.0 - 303.7 Ma)

• The recognized age of the Badger Creek locality is based on the vertebrate assemblage that it produces (Vaughn, 1969a)

• bed-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: fluvial-lacustrine; shale

• The vertebrate remains are produced from a meter-thick, lens-shaped black shale unit—designated as part of ‘Interval 300’ by Brill (1952)—that is thought to represent a pond deposit, perhaps an oxbow lake that was present within the general system of the stream channels preserved within this part of the formation; in addition to the lenticular shape of the bed, the presence of palaeoniscoid fish scales and small pelecypods further suggests an aquatic origin of the deposit (Vaughn, 1972)
• The Sangre de Cristo Formation is approximately 2933 m thick (Vaughn, 1972), with the fossil-bearing site located approximately 442 m above the base of the formation, as defined by Brill (1952).

Size class: macrofossils

Reposited in the CM

Primary reference: R. Kissel. 2010. Morphology, Phylogeny, and Evolution of Diadectidae (Cotylosauria: Diadectomorpha). University of Toronto [R. Butler/E. Dunne]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 180938: authorized by Richard Butler, entered by Emma Dunne on 08.08.2016

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Show authors, comments, and common names
Osteichthyes
 Synapsida - Edaphosauridae
Ianthasaurus sp.
Ianthasaurus sp. Reisz and Berman 1986 synapsid
 Cotylosauria - Limnoscelidae
Limnoscelis dynatis
Limnoscelis dynatis Berman and Sumida 1990 tetrapod
 Cotylosauria - Diadectidae
Desmatodon hesperis n. sp.
Desmatodon hesperis n. sp. Vaughn 1969 tetrapod
CM 47654 (Holotype (formerly UCLA VP 1706): a left maxilla with complete dentition). Also, disarticulated skull and postcranial elements.
Amphibia
 Microsauria - Trihecatontidae
Trihecaton howardinus
Trihecaton howardinus Vaughn 1972 tetrapod
a nearly complete, articulated skeleton