Mount Flora D.37.15 (Jurassic of Antarctica)

Where: Antarctica (63.4° S, 57.0° W: paleocoordinates 54.1° S, 30.1° W)

• coordinate based on nearby landmark

• outcrop-level geographic resolution

When: Flora Glacier Member (Mount Flora Formation), Late/Upper Callovian (164.7 - 161.2 Ma)

• 25 feet below top of plant horizon. U-Pb dates indicate an age of 163.541 ± 0.052/0.090/0.20 Ma (MSWD =0.66) and 163.55 5± 0.071/0.10/0.20 Ma (MSWD =1.5) for the tuffaceous unit of the formation (Scasso et al., 2022). If the previously reported U-Pb SIMS age of 162.2±1.1 Ma from volcanic rocks overlying the Mount Flora Formation (Hunter et al., 2005) (presumably a Kenney Glacier Formation sample) is accurate, it implies that the upper half of the Mount Flora Formation with a thickness of nearly 200 m and including all of its plant remain was deposited in a relatively short time period of 1.4±1.1 m.y. in the Callovian.

• group of beds-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: pond; lithified, black shale

• Floodplain pond. Rifting of Antarctic peninsula to produce Weddell Sea basin.

Size class: macrofossils

Collected by W.N. Croft in 1946; reposited in the BMNH

Primary reference: F. E. Zeuner. 1959. Jurassic beetles from Grahamland, Antarctica. Palaeontology 1:407-409 [M. Clapham/M. Clapham]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 140942: authorized by Matthew Clapham, entered by Matthew Clapham on 19.03.2013

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Insecta
 Coleoptera - Trachypachidae
Ademosynoides antarcticus n. sp. Zeuner 1959 false ground beetle
BMNH In. 51766
 Coleoptera -
Grahamelytron crofti n. gen. n. sp.
Grahamelytron crofti n. gen. n. sp. Zeuner 1959 beetle
BMNH In. 51764, 51765