Underwood, Charlie J. and Ward, D.J. and King, C. and Antar, S.M. and Zalmout, I.S. and Gingerich, P.D. (2011) Shark and ray faunas in the Middle and Late Eocene of the Fayum Area, Egypt. Proceedings of the Geologists' Association 122 (1), pp. 47-66. ISSN 0016-7878.
Abstract
The Eocene rocks exposed in the Fayum Area, Egypt, are well known for their fossil vertebrates but in recent times the sharks and rays have been largely neglected. Extensive surface collecting, supplemented with bulk samples, has produced large collections from the Midawara, Gehannam, Birket Qarun and Qasr el-Sagha formations, spanning the Bartonian and Priabonian stages and from palaeoenvironments varying from open muddy shelf to very shallow estuarine systems. In total about 90 species of sharks and rays are recorded, many of them previously unrecognised, resulting in some of the most diverse fossil chondrichthyan assemblages known from the Tertiary. Teeth of these species suggest that they occupied a wide range of ecological niches from top predator to tiny benthic invertebrate feeder to planktivore. Many of the species are limited in their stratigraphical range and show potential to be used, at least locally, as biostratigraphical indicators for stratigraphically poorly constrained vertebrate sites elsewhere in North Africa. Distinctly different faunas from different sedimentary environments indicate a strong environmental control on the distribution of many species.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Keyword(s) / Subject(s): | Egypt, eocene, palaeoecology, shark, ray |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Natural Sciences |
| Depositing User: | Administrator |
| Date Deposited: | 27 Jan 2011 13:48 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 16:54 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/2984 |
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