Cala Gata (Permian to of Spain)

Also known as Ca La Gata

Where: Balearic Islands, Spain (39.7° N, 2.6° E: paleocoordinates 39.7° N, 2.5° E)

• coordinate stated in text

• hand sample-level geographic resolution

When: Port des Canonge Formation, Guadalupian to Guadalupian (273.0 - 252.2 Ma)

• "The relative age of the ‘Areniscas y Lutitas de Port des Canonge’ (for convenience hereafter referred to as Port des Canonge beds) is not well constrained and depends on whether its top is considered a major unconformity or not. Ramos and Doubinger (1989) identified a Late Permian (‘Thuringian’) palynoflora in the middle part of the overlying Asá beds and consequently also assigned the Port des Canonge beds to the Upper Permian. This was adopted by most subsequent workers (Gomez-Gras, 1993; Ramos, 1995; Arche et al., 2002; Linol et al., 2009), except Bourquin et al. (2007) and Bourquin et al. (2011) who assume a major hiatus between the Port des Canonge and Asá beds and thus regard the former as Middle Permian. At least the Permian age now appears to be further corroborated by the occurrence of a captorhinid reptile." (Liebrecht et al., 2017 supplementary material p. 1, 2)

• bed-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: "floodplain"; lithified, fine-grained, red siliciclastic sediments

• "They [i.e. the Permo-Triassic redbeds exposed in the vicinity of Port des Canonge] represent the infill of postvariscan northwest-southeast trending extensional structures whose origin is closely related to that of the Permo-Triassic basins of the Iberian Chain (Gomez-Gras, 1993). The source area of the redbeds was the Hesperian Massif – the Iberian part of the Variscan mountains – to the northwest, and deposition took place under semi-arid conditions (Ramos, 1995; Linol et al., 2009)" (Liebrecht et al., 2017 supplementary material p. 1).

•"Our field work confirmed that the siliciclastic redbeds of the Port des Canonge area are clearly terrestrial. They show features of fluvial deposition (channel and overbank flood deposits) as well as of soil formation such as root traces" (Liebrecht et al., 2017 supplementary material p. 2).

• "The coastal cliffs at Port des Canonge [...] are the type section of the deep red sandstones, siltstones, and claystones of the Port des Canonge beds [...]" (Liebrecht et al., 2017 supplementary material p. 2).

•"The sediment adhering to the specimen allows an assignment to the siltstones and mudstones exposed in the coastal section of the Port des Canonge area. Hence, the maxilla must either have immediately been weathered out of the coastal cliff or transported via an ephemeral stream over a very short distance from an inland exposure of the same lithologic unit (i.e. the Port des Canonge beds)" (Liebrecht et al., 2017 supplementary material p. 2).

Size class: macrofossils

Preservation: permineralized

Collected by L. Hannen in 2002

Collection methods: surface (float)

• "The maxilla was found incidentally by Mrs. Lieselotte Hannen, a hobby collector, on a beach [...] in 2002. [...] The specimen is now accessioned at the Museu Balear de Ciències Naturals (MBCN) in Sóller, Island of Mallorca."

Primary reference: T. Liebrecht, J. Fortuny, A. Galobart, J. Müller, and P. M. Sander. 2017. A large, multiple-tooth-rowed captorhinid reptile (Amniota: Eureptilia) from the Upper Permian of Mallorca (Balearic Islands, western Mediterranean). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 37(1):e1251936 [J. Mueller/T. Liebrecht/T. Liebrecht]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 186135: authorized by Johannes Mueller, entered by Torsten Liebrecht on 15.06.2017

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Show authors, comments, and common names
Reptilia
 Eureptilia - Captorhinidae
Moradisaurinae indet.
Moradisaurinae indet. de Ricqlès and Taquet 1982 eureptile
MBCN 15730 (a partial right maxilla and parts of the palate)