Abstract
Abstract. Recently, a vertebrate assemblage of the Jehol Biota has been reported from the Early Cretaceous Hengtongshan Formation of Xingling Town, Meihekou City, Jilin Province, China. It is dominated by the fishes Lycoptera and Sinamia and the sinemydid turtle Ordosemys. Here, we describe the turtle specimens and referral to Ordosemys liaoxiensis, otherwise known from the older Yixian Formation of the Jehol Biota. It is characterized by a subcircular shell, wide vertebral scales, well-developed plastral fenestrae, and a major contribution from the xiphiplastra to enclose the hypo-xiphiplastral fenestra. As the first Mesozoic turtle of Jilin Province, this record represents the first tetrapod to indicate the presence of the Jehol Biota in the region. Given the geographic and temporal distance from the Yixian Formation, future collections from the Hengtongshan Formation have good potential for evaluating spatiotemporal patterns of the Jehol Biota.
Highlights
The Jehol Biota of northeastern China is renowned for providing exceptional insights into an Early Cretaceous ecosystem through its exquisite preservation of plant, invertebrate, and vertebrate fossils (e.g., Zhou et al, 2003; Pan et al, 2013)
As the first record of the Mesozoic turtles from Jilin Province, the sinemydid Ordosemys has been reported from the Early Cretaceous Hengtongshan Formation of Xingling Town, Meihekou City (Wu et al, 2018)
This material has not been described yet, and its species-level taxonomy awaits clarification. We describe this material, together with other two specimens, and clarify their taxonomic status. We show that these turtles represent the first tetrapod evidence for the presence of the Jehol Biota in the Hengtongshan Formation
Summary
The Jehol Biota of northeastern China (western Liaoning and conjoint areas) is renowned for providing exceptional insights into an Early Cretaceous ecosystem through its exquisite preservation of plant, invertebrate, and vertebrate fossils (e.g., Zhou et al, 2003; Pan et al, 2013). As the first record of the Mesozoic turtles from Jilin Province, the sinemydid Ordosemys has been reported from the Early Cretaceous Hengtongshan Formation of Xingling Town, Meihekou City (Wu et al, 2018). This material has not been described yet, and its species-level taxonomy awaits clarification. We describe this material, together with other two specimens, and clarify their taxonomic status We show that these turtles represent the first tetrapod evidence for the presence of the Jehol Biota in the Hengtongshan Formation. Ordosemys donghai (i.e., Manchurochelys donghai, Ma, 1986) as recombined by Brinkman et al (2008) from Heilongjiang, is possibly excluded from Ordosemys in lacking the typical generic features (Li et al, 2019)
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