RECENT RESEARCH IN THE MIOCENE PINTURAS FORMATION, SANTA CRUZ, ARGENTINA

FLEAGLE, JOHN; TEJEDOR, MARCELO; NOVO, NELSON; GONZALEZ-RUIZ, LAUREANO; BRANDONI DIEGO; MARTIN, GABRIEL

Salt Lake City, Utah

Congreso; SOCIETY OF VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY, 76th ANNUAL MEETING; 2016

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology

Fossils were first discovered from the valley of the Rio Pinturas in the northwestern corner of Santa Cruz Province, Argentina, by Carlos Ameghino in 1891. They were subsequently described by his brother, Florentino Ameghino. In the 1980s, expeditions from Stony Brook University and the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales (MACN) made extensive collections from several horizons in the Pinturas Formation leading to the discovery and description of a large, stratigraphically documented, mammalian fauna, including four taxa of platyrrhine primates. Later expeditions from the Centro Nacional Patagonico (CENPAT) in Puerto Madryn and the Laboratorio de Investigaciones en Evolution y Biodiversidad at the Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia in Esquel havefurther expanded our knowledge of the mammalian fossils from this formation. Recent research activities have 1) clarified longstanding debates over the relative age of the Pinturas Formation and the more widespread Santa Cruz Formation; 2) expanded our knowledge of the age, provenance, and morphology of fossil sloths (Tardigrada) from the area; and 3) provided greater documentation of the morphology and stratigraphic distribution of fossil primates from the Pinturas. This additional material indicates that the primate diversity in the Pinturas Formation is almost certainly much greater than previously described. Moreover, paleontological research in other parts of Argentina and other parts of South America have expanded the diversity and distribution of fossilprimates related to those first described from the Pinturas Formation.