Arktocara yakataga Boersma & Pyenson, 2016, sp. nov.

• Main Authors: Alexandra T. Boersma, Nicholas D. Pyenson
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2016
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Taxonomy; Animalia; Chordata; Mammalia; Cetacea; Allodelphinidae; Arktocara; Arktocara yakataga; Big River; Hamilton Creek; glacier; Yakutat; Alaska
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5658608; http://treatment.plazi.org/id/E03BF937AF37FFC90764FBB5FA98DDE6

Arktocara yakataga, sp. nov. (Figs. 2 10 and Table 1) LSID: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act: FBCF 0EAA­7BBB­4EF0­8186­7548993098D1 Holotype. USNM 214830, consisting of an incomplete skull lacking the rostrum anterior of the antorbital notches, tympanoperiotics, dentition and mandibles (see Fig. 2). Type locality. The precise geographic coordinates for the type locality of Arktocara yakataga are unknown. The type specimen (USNM 214830) was discovered and collected in 1951 by United States Geological Survey (USGS) geologist Donald J. Miller (1919 1961), who was mapping what was then the Yakataga District of Alaska (now the Yakutat City and Borough) between 1944 and 1963. Archival notes housed with the specimen at USNM state that Miller found the specimen in the Poul Creek Formation within the then­Yakataga District (see Age, below). Therefore, we delimit the area for the type’s provenance to exposures of the Poul Creek Formation in the Yakutat City and Borough, Alaska, USA, in a grid ranging approximately from 60 22 0N, 142 30 0W to 60 0 0 0N, 143 22 0W (see Fig. 1). While the formation has been named from its exposures along Poul Creek, it has been suggested that the most abundant macrofossils from this unit have been collected from outcrops along Hamilton Creek, White River, and Big River near Reare Glacier (Taliaferro, 1932). It is possible that Miller collected USNM 214830 from one of these exposures. Formation. Poul Creek Formation. Age. Archival documentation accessioned in the Department of Paleobiology with USNM 214830 indicate that the type specimen was collected from an unknown locality exposed about 400 500 m below the top of the Poul Creek Formation, which has a total stratigraphic thickness of around 1.9 km (Plafker, 1987). The Yakutat terrane of Southeast Alaska consists of the Kulthieth, Poul Creek, and Yakataga Formations (Perry, Garver & Ridgway, 2009; Plafker, Moore & Winkler, 1994; Miller, 1971). The Kulthieth Formation consists of mostly organic­rich sandstones deposited in nonmarine alluvial, ...