Abstract
The Urumaco stratigraphic sequence, western Venezuela, preserves a variety of paleoenvironments that include terrestrial, riverine, lacustrine and marine facies. A wide range of fossil vertebrates associated with these facies supports the hypothesis of an estuary in that geographic area connected with a hydrographic system that flowed from western Amazonia up to the Proto-Caribbean Sea during the Miocene. Here the elasmobranch assemblages of the middle Miocene to middle Pliocene section of the Urumaco sequence (Socorro, Urumaco and Codore formations) are described. Based on new findings, we document at least 21 taxa of the Lamniformes, Carcharhiniformes, Myliobatiformes and Rajiformes, and describe a new carcharhiniform species (†Carcharhinus caquetius sp. nov.). Moreover, the Urumaco Formation has a high number of well-preserved fossil Pristis rostra, for which we provide a detailed taxonomic revision, and referral in the context of the global Miocene record of Pristis as well as extant species. Using the habitat preference of the living representatives, we hypothesize that the fossil chondrichthyan assemblages from the Urumaco sequence are evidence for marine shallow waters and estuarine habitats.
Highlights
The Caribbean Sea today is environmentally stable and ecologically complex, and it is characterized by high fish diversity [1]
Neogene chondrichthyan faunas in the Caribbean region are still little known in comparison with other regions as Europe and North America (e.g. [2]), several previous works from diverse sedimentary basins exist (e.g. [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]) documenting the paleodiversity of Caribbean faunas before and after the complete closure of the Central American Seaway [25]
The specimens are deposited in the paleontological collections of the Alcaldía Bolivariana de Urumaco (AMU-CURS), Centro de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Arqueológicas, Paleontológicas of the Universidad Experimental Francisco de Miranda (CIAAP, UNEFM-PF), and the Museo de Ciencias de Caracas (MCNC)
Summary
The Caribbean Sea today is environmentally stable and ecologically complex, and it is characterized by high fish diversity [1]. Alcaldía Bolivariana del Municipio Urumaco and Museo Paleontologico de Urumaco, Estado Falcón, Venezuela This paleontological collection does not have a website with a public databank. Other fossils referred and illustrated in our article, belong to the Museo de Ciencias de Caracas (MCNC) and to the Centro de Investigaciones Antropologicas, Arqueologicas y Paleontologicas de la Universidad Experimental Francisco de Miranda, Falcón estate, Venezuela. These institutions have paleontological collections with public access, which is obtained by a request directly with the curator of the collection and the competent authorities. All relevant data necessary to replicate the results presented in our article, are available in these paleontological collections of public access referred above
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