Manuel Iturralde-Vinent

Mark Norell

Academic paper

American Museum Novitates

No. 3164

7 pages

In western Cuba there are well-developed Late Jurassic deposits that yield important and insufficiently studied marine vertebrate faunas. The middle Oxfordian fossil-bearing rocks are calcareous concretions embedded in black shales of the Jagua and Francisco Formations. The fossil biota includes plesiosaurs, pterosaurs and crocodyliforms, ganoids fishes, and several invertebrates are found in well-bedded limestones of the Artemisa Formation. Because the information concerning these fossils is dispersed in hard-to-find publications and several collections, a catalog is presented here which includes the most important reptile fossil localities along with brief descriptions of the fossil material and information on their ages, stratigraphic positions and associated fossils. A discussion concerning the validity of several of the published Jurassic reptilian taxa from Cuba is also provided. The Western Cuban Oxfordian fauna is important because it is associated with the initial Mesozoic marine transgression on the North American continental margin within the Caribbean area.

English