THE EXTINCT NAUTILOID ATURIA FROM THE MIDDLE MIOCENE OF PACIFIC SOUTH AMERICA

We report on an aturiid (Cephalopoda: Nautiloidea) shell from the Pisco Formation, a Neogene marine sedimentary unit of the East Pisco Basin (southern Peru) that is broadly renowned for its rich and exquisitely preserved marine vertebrate fossil content, including an outstanding cetacean assemblage....

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: A. Collareta, G. Bosio, R. Varas-Malca, G. Bianucci, M. Merella, M. Urbina, C. Di Celma
Other Authors: Evangelos Vlachos, Vicente D. Crespo, María Ríos Ibañez, Fernando Antonio M. Arnal, Arturo Gamonal, Penélope Cruzado-Caballero, Javier González-Dionis, Rosalía Guerrero-Arenas, Alba Sánchez-García, Collareta, A., Bosio, G., Varas-Malca, R., Bianucci, G., Merella, M., Urbina, M., Di Celma, C.
Format: Conference Object
Language:English
Published: 2023
Subjects:
toothed whale
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/11568/1225601
https://palaeovc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/PVC4.pdf
Description
Summary:We report on an aturiid (Cephalopoda: Nautiloidea) shell from the Pisco Formation, a Neogene marine sedimentary unit of the East Pisco Basin (southern Peru) that is broadly renowned for its rich and exquisitely preserved marine vertebrate fossil content, including an outstanding cetacean assemblage. This specimen was collected from Middle Miocene strata exposed in the vicinity of Cerro Submarino. It consists of an internal mould of a phragmocone and is tentatively identified herein as belonging to the widespread, long-ranging species Aturia cubaensis. This fossil represents the first occurrence of Aturia in the Middle Miocene of the Pacific margin of South America, and as such, it fills a gap in the chronostratigraphic distribution of the Southeastern Pacific finds of this genus, helping to bridge the Lower and Upper Miocene segments of its regional fossil record. The rarity of Aturia in the shelfal Cenozoic deposits of the East Pisco Basin may reflect the palaeoenvironmental habits of this extinct cephalopod genus, which may have lived in the upper bathyal zone, at about 250–350 m water depth. Despite some recent suggestions that some extinct and extant marine mammal ecomorphotypes (including some odontocetes) were likely predators of nautiloids, there is no indication that any member of the diverse and abundant toothed whale faunas of the Pisco Formation exploited these shelled cephalopods as a relevant food source.

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