Mount Wyatt Earp Fmn., unnamed nunatuk near Planck Pt., Heritage Rng. (Devonian of Antarctica)

Where: Antarctica (79.3° S, 85.3° W: paleocoordinates 33.9° S, 166.5° W)

• coordinate stated in text

• local area-level geographic resolution

When: Mount Wyatt Earp Formation (Crashite Group), Early/Lower Devonian (419.2 - 393.3 Ma)

• Collection thought to be from near base of formation. Fauna said to correlate most closely with Horlick Formation (see PBDB ref. 9605 and its collections).

• formation-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: marine; micaceous, brown, sandy siltstone and gray shale

• "The Mount Wyatt Earp Formation was deposited under shallow-marine conditions. Marked lateral variations in lithology are apparently due to variations in source directions, although no work on this subject has yet been done. The pronounced increase in argillite and the marked increase in matrix and rock fragment percentages in the quartzites compared to the underlying Mount Liptak Fm. could indicate an uplift of the source area and/or the onset of glacial conditionss associated with the Permo-Carboniferous glaciation"
• "The Crashite Group is a 3,000 m-thick unit composed predominantly of orthoquartzite...The youngest formation in the Crashite Group is the Mt. Wyatt Earp Fmn, which attains a maximum thickness of 300 m in the Sentinel Range. Lithologically it consists dominantly of dark gray, red, and dark brown impure quartzites with interbeds of brown argillite...[lateral variation and ice-rafted dropstones described]...A 128 m-thick measured section exposes buff micaceous, silty, fine-grained sandstones, brown micaceous sandy siltstones, and blocky, dark gray argillites. The fossils were found in the siltstones and argillites."

Primary reference: G. F. Webers, B. Glenister, J. Pojeta, Jr. and G. Young. 1992. Devonian fossils from the Ellsworth Mountains, West Antarctica. Geological Society of America Memoir 170:269-278 [M. Foote/M. Foote/M. Foote]more details

Purpose of describing collection: biostratigraphic analysis

PaleoDB collection 35567: authorized by Michael Foote, entered by Michael Foote on 21.12.2003, edited by Pete Wagner

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Scyphozoa
 Conulariida -
Conulariida indet. Miller and Gurley 1896 jellyfish
Trilobita
  -
Trilobita indet. Walch 1771 trilobite
Lingulata
 Lingulida - Discinidae
Strophomenata
 Strophomenida - Chonetidae
? Chonetes sp. Fischer de Waldheim 1830
Bivalvia
 Nuculanida - Cucullellidae
 Cardiidia - Grammysiidae
? Grammysioidea sp. Williams 1916 clam
Rostroconchia
 Conocardiida - Hippocardiidae
? Hippocardia sp. Brown 1843
Gastropoda
  -
Gastropoda indet. Cuvier 1795 snail
Cephalopoda
 Orthoceratoidea -
Orthocerida indet. Kuhn 1940
cf. Orthoceratidae
Chondrichthyes
  - Machaeracanthidae
Machaeracanthus cf. kayseri Kegel 1913 spiny fish