Jebel Barakah (Miocene of the United Arab Emirates)

Where: Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (24.0° N, 52.3° E: paleocoordinates 22.4° N, 51.0° E)

• coordinate stated in text

• small collection-level geographic resolution

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

• formation-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: fluvial-lacustrine; poorly lithified, ferruginous, red sandstone and calcareous, carbonaceous conglomerate

• poorly consolidated sands, horizontally bedded, mainly reddish-brown in color with both sets and cosets present...thin laterallly discontinuous conglomerate, (the petrology of the conglomerate clasts is similar to that of the sands that are mature and polycyclic with sub-angular quartz, feldspars, tourmaline and micas rarely cemented with carbonate).

Size class: macrofossils

Collection methods: An earlier reference (Whybrow and McClure, 1980) describes what may be fossils of this collection, but impossible to tell for sure. If it's the same collection, it also has a crocodile vertebra.

Primary reference: P. J. Whybrow. 1989. New Stratotype: the Baynunah Formation (Late Miocene), United Arab Emirates: Lithology and palaeontology. Newsletter on Stratigraphy 21(1):1-9 [J. Alroy/E. Leckey/E. Leckey]more details

Purpose of describing collection: biostratigraphic analysis

PaleoDB collection 28245: authorized by John Alroy, entered by Erin Leckey on 03.02.2003

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

• [paraphrasal] The fauna consists of freshwater molluscs; siluriform fish; fragmentary indeterminate trionychid and pleomedusid carapace/plastron material; fragments of struthionid eggshell; a partial right mandible of a listriodontine or kubanocherine pig; a partial tooth and fragmented postcranial bones of a proboscidean; teeth and postcranial bones referrable to an equid; a hoppopotamid mandible; horn cores of a bovid; a proximal part of a left radiaus, not unike that of a cervid.

•two fragments of pleurals, left pleural 5, left hyoplastron, partial right hypoplastron, partial right hypoplastron, entoplastron

Bivalvia
 Unionida - Unionidae
cf. Anodonta sp. freshwater mussel
"freshwater molluscs probably Anodonta"
Reptilia
 Testudines - Trionychidae
Trionyx sp. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire 1809 softshell turtle
 Testudines - Geoemydidae
Mauremys sp. Gray 1870 pond turtle
may be re-id of Pelomedusidae indet.
 Testudines - Pelomedusidae
Pelomedusidae indet. Cope 1868 sideneck turtle
Aves
 Struthioniformes - Struthionidae
Struthionidae indet. Vigors 1825 ostrich
Mammalia
 Proboscidea - Elephantidae
 Perissodactyla - Equidae
"Hipparion" cf. sitifense Pomel 1897 hipparionine horse
 Artiodactyla - Suidae
Suidae indet. Gray 1821 pig
listriodontine or kubanochoerine pig
 Artiodactyla - Bovidae
Miotragocerus sp. Stromer 1928 antelope
 Artiodactyla - Cervidae
Cervidae indet. Gray 1821 deer
 Artiodactyla - Hippopotamidae
"cf. Hexaprotodon harvardi" = Archaeopotamus harvardi
"cf. Hexaprotodon harvardi" = Archaeopotamus harvardi Coryndon 1977 hippopotamus
Actinopteri
 Siluriformes - Bagridae
Bagrus sp. Bosc 1816 naked catfish
 Siluriformes - Clariidae
Clarias sp. Scopoli 1777 catfish
unclassified
  -
Plantae indet. Haeckel 1866
fossil wood, rotted with algal threads