McKelligon Canyon (Ordovician of the United States)

Also known as southern Franklin Mts.

Where: El Paso County, Texas (31.8° N, 106.5° W: paleocoordinates 15.0° S, 87.6° W)

• coordinate estimated from map

• small collection-level geographic resolution

When: Scenic Drive Formation (El Paso Group), Cassinian (482.3 - 470.0 Ma)

• "Cassinian portion of the El Paso, B2b of Cloud & Barnes [1946, Univ. Texas Publ. 4621]" (p. 120)

•B2B means "submember" b of "member" 2 of "formation" B of El Paso Group. This interval corresponds to the Scenic Drive Fm. or to the Cindy Fm. and lower Ranger Peak Fm., respectively (see fig. 4 in Goldham et al., 1993, J. Sedim. Petr. 63(3))

• member-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: lagoonal or restricted shallow subtidal; stromatolitic, ooidal, peloidal, shelly/skeletal grainstone and lime mudstone

• "The southern Franklin Mountains [...] in west Texas [...] form the southeastern part of the Cambro-Ordovician Diablo Platform [...], which presents a thick Lower Ordovician shallow-marine carbonate section that accumulated as part of a huge, gently dipping carbonate platform that rimmed the North American continent. The Lower Ordovician is a passive-margin sequence resting unconformably on a rifted Precambrian succession." (Goldhammer et al., 1993)
• lithologies are from measured sections in appendix 2 of Goldhammer et al. (1993, J. Sed. Petr. 63(3))

Size class: macrofossils

Reposited in the USNM

• RHF = collection of Rousseau H. Flower, transferred to the Smithsonian Institution/U.S. National Museum (see Wolberg, 1990, J. Paleont. 64(3, 5, 6))

Primary reference: R. H. Flower. 1964. The Nautiloid Order Ellesmeroceratida (Cephalopoda). State Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Memoir 12:234 p. [B. Kröger/T. Liebrecht/P. Wagner]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 88776: authorized by Björn Kröger, entered by Torsten Liebrecht on 20.04.2009

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Show authors, comments, and common names
Cephalopoda
 Tarphycerida - Tarphyceratidae
Centrotarphyceras longicameratum
Centrotarphyceras longicameratum
RHF 812 (part, paratype); species is described elsewhere, but no reference is given; thus it is unclear whether the holotype is from the same locality
 Ellesmerocerida - Ellesmeroceratidae
? Clelandoceras rarum n. sp.
? Clelandoceras rarum n. sp. Flower 1964
RHF 812 (part), 813 (part and counterpart blocks, holotype is no. 813)
 Orthocerida - Baltoceratidae
Rhabdiferoceras sp.
Rhabdiferoceras sp. Flower 1964
RHF 885