Marta S. Fernandez

Manuel Iturralde-Vinent

Academic paper

Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology

20

1

191-193

Western Cuba has yielded significant material of Juarassic marine reptiles sinse very early in this century, when the Cuban naturalist Don Carlos de la Torre y Huerta discovered the first specimens from the rigion of Vinlaes (Alvarez Conde 1957). It was some time before the fossil reptiles wre partially described (R. de la Torre and Cuervo, 1939; De la Torre and Rojas, 1949, Colbert, 1969). The presence of "ichthyosaur remains" within this assemblage was first reported by R. De la Torre and Cuervo (1939) who descrobed two new taxa, Sphaerodontes caroli and Ichthyosaurus torrei, but neither are now considered valid because the first was based on a fish, and the second has been reidentified as a plesiosaur (Ituralde-Vincent and Norell, 1996). In a later paper R. De la Torre and Rojas (1949) described one species and two sub-species of "ichthyosaurs", but they referred the taxa to Cryptoclidus, a plesiosaur genus. In fact none of these species or subspecies are referable to Ichthyosauria (Ituralde-Vincent and Norell 1996). Recently a synopsis of the provenance and identity of Jurassic marine reptiles from Cuba has been published by Ituralde-Vincent and Norell (1996). In this paper many of the early taxonomic designations have been revised, but no ichthyosaur remains could be identified.
Some of the Jurassic fossil remains of marine reptiles from Cuba have been sent on loan to the Departmento Paleontologica de Vertebratos of the Museo de La Plata (Argentina), as part of a joint research project between the Argentinian institution and the Cuban Museo National de Historia Natural in Havana. Among these materials is a specimen (MNHNH-P 3068) embedded in black limestone which before preparation was characterised by Ituralde-Vincent and Norell (1996) as skull fragments of a large marine reptile composed of a few bone fragments surrounding extremely large scleal ossicles. According to the authors it represented the largest saurian specimen yet recovered from the Jurassic of Cuba. Further preparation of MNHMN-P 3068 at the Museo de La Plata allowed the identification of the skull bones preserved, among which there is the basioccipital that is of important taxonomic interest. With these elements the reptile can be identified as an ichthyosaurian of the opthalmosauria (sensu Motani, 1999). This is the first ichthyosaur properly identified from Cuba. The scope of this paper is to describe the new specimen and analyze it's paleobiogeographical significance.

English