A New Mammalian Local Fauna from the Lower Pliocene of Texas

Abstract

In June, 1962, students from West Texas State University at Canyon, Texas, showed the junior author where they had discovered remains of Pliocene vertebrates in a sandstone cliff in Moore County, 30 miles north of Amarillo, Texas. On this and subsequent visits remains of mammals and turtles were found, and the fossils have been catalogued as belonging to Site No. P174 in the collections of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum at Canyon. In August, 1964, the senior author and students from Midwestern University visited the site and obtained a small collection. Although fossils are few, fragmentary and scattered, persistent searching has yielded a small but important fauna, and we suggest that this be termed the Exell local fauna. The site of the discovery is at the headwaters of South Plum Creek, 4 miles east-northeast of the tonvn of Exell, Moore County, Texas, in the SW 1/4 of Section 2, Block B-10, E. L. and R. R. Survey. We are indebted to Garry Owens, Joe Fandrich, Charles Pinkston and John Woods for showing us the fossil-bearing outcrops and donating important speci. mens to the Panhandle-PIains Historical Museum. The drawings were * ,, made by Mrs. Penny Nowell. i At the site of the fossil deposit, < South Plum Creek is a small, interX % mittent stream that has cut into the A / flanks of several small hills to form < cliffs 10 to 30 feet high. The rocks / exposed in the faces of the cliffs o so ,00 ,s0 a g include massive sandstones and < laminated sandstone and shale layFig. 1. Location of the Exell Site (1) ers. The predomlnant color ls in relation to the typical Clarendonian sites bright russet. Some standstones are of Donley County, Texas (2). highly quarttose and bright reddish in color but others are gray. The standstone layers of the laminated deposits vary from a fraction of an inch to several inches in thickness, and range from gray tol reddish in color. The shale layers are usually