Where: Northern Cape, South Africa (29.6° S, 24.2° E: paleocoordinates 62.2° S, 40.7° W)

• coordinate based on nearby landmark

• hand sample-level geographic resolution

When: ? Whitehill Formation (Ecca Group), Artinskian (290.1 - 279.3 Ma)

• " [...] Kimberley Shales. Diese [...] nehmen eine ziemlich tiefe Stellung in der Schichtenreihe der Karooformation ein; sie folgen als Aequivalent der Eccabeds, unmittelbar über der untersten Stufe, dem Dwykaconglomerat [Kimberley Shales. These ... occupy a quite deep position within the Karoo succession; they follow, as an equivalent of the Ecca beds, immediately above the lowermost horizon, the Dwyka conglomerate] [...] " (Gürich, 1889).

•According to the geographic, stratigraphic and lithologic informations given by Gürich (1889) the horizon in question appears to be in the Prince Albert or Whitehill Formation of modern nomenclature (see fig. 24 in Catuneanu et al., 2005, Afr. J. Earth Sci. 43). Since Oelofsen & Araujo (1987, S. Afr. J. Sci. 83) say that the occurrence of mesosaurs in South Africa is exclusively restricted to the Whitehill Formation ("the White Band") of the Ecca Group, the present collection is tentatively assigned to the Whitehill Formation.

•Radiometric ages of the Collinson Fm. (overlying the Whitehill Fm.) vary between 270 and 275 Ma (Turner, 1999, J. Afr. Earth Sci. 28(1); Fildani et al., 2007 J. Sedim. Res. 77), and radiometric ages of the basal beds of the Prince Albert Fm. (underlying the Whitehill Fm.) vary between 293 and 285 Ma (Bangert et al., 1999, J. Afr. Earth Sci. 29(1)), implying an Artinskian age for the Whitehill Fm. (see time scales of Gradstein et al. (2004) and Ogg et al. (2008)). Radiometric dating within the Whitehill Fm. of southern Namibia (Werner, 2006, PhD thesis, http://www.opus-bayern.de/uni-wuerzburg/volltexte/2007/2175/pdf/00-Complete_thesis-STD.pdf) corroborates an assigment to the Artinskian.

• bed-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: offshore; black, gray, cherty/siliceous shale

Size class: macrofossils

Preservation: mold/impression

Collection methods: The current whereabouts of the original fossil are not known to the enterer (TL). Apparently the specimen was reposited in Breslau (Wrocław) on the threshold of the 20th century (see Frech, 1901, Lethaea geognostica part I: Lethaea palaeozoica, vol. 2, issue 3). A shellack cast is in the collections of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.

•Note: Rossmann & Maisch (1999, Mitt. Bayer. Staatsslg. Paläont. hist. Geol. 39) list a specimen in the collections of the Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Historische Geologie (BSP) as the holotype of D. capensis. However, they (Rossmann & Maisch, 1999) say that this specimen was recovered from Kabus in Namibia. No further statement on whether this BSP specimen is probably a neotype nor a discussion on Gürich's (1889) original locality description is given by Rossmann & Maisch (1999).

•Karl et al. (2007, Clausthaler Geowiss. 6) suspect the BSP specimen listed by Rossmann & Maisch (1999) not to be the holotype of D. capensis because it apparently was collected about 25 years after Gürich's description of the species (see PBDB coll. no. 90755).

Primary reference: G. Gürich. 1889. Ditrochosaurus capensis - ein neuer Mesosaurier aus der Karooformation Süd-Afrikas. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Geologischen Gesellschaft 41(4):641-652 [J. Mueller/T. Liebrecht]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 89799: authorized by Johannes Mueller, entered by Torsten Liebrecht on 13.06.2009

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)