Miocene echinoids from Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico

Abstract

Recent collecting in the Miocene Tulijá Formation near Palenque, Chiapas State of Mexico, has provided five species of echinoids: Stomopneustes pristinus, Echinolampas aldrichi, Clypeaster chiapasensis, Agassizia regia, and Schizaster dumblei; their reports are illustrated, measured and described. These new reports are a significant expansion of the known distribution of Stomopneustes pristinus and Agassizia regia, which were previously documented merely from their type localities; also, this is the first confirmed report of Schizaster dumblei in the Miocene. Neotype material is established for C. chiapasensis and discrepancies between previous descriptions have been resolved. The echinoid fauna of the Tulijá Formation shares species with the Meson and Tuxpan formations on the Gulf of Mexico and supports the description of the Tulijá Formation as a shallow marine paleoenvironment with high energy. With these revisions we start sketching an interesting system between the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico basin; due to the general quality of the fossil record and the scarce revisions on the paleofauna of the region, the present report help fill what has been a major gap in recognizing the distribution of echinoids.