CONTRIBUTION TO THE ARGENTINEAN PALEOHERPETOLOGY FROM THE "MUSEO MOYANO" OF MENDOZA APORTES A LA PALEOHERPETOLOGIA ARGENTINA DESDE EL "MUSEO MOYANO" DE MENDOZA

CERDENO, ESPERANZA; DEVINCENZI, SUSANA M.; PARRAL, MERCEDES

Publicacion Electronica de la Asociacion Paleontologica Argentina

Asociacion Paleontologica Argentina

Lugar: Buenos Aires; Año: 2022 vol. 22 p. 148 - 156

Mendoza Province is an Argentinean area that has yielded numerous herpetological fossils. From an historical viewpoint, the Museo Moyano has played an important role, especially between 1937 and 1968, when the naturalist Carlos Rusconi was the institutional director. C. Rusconi collected a great number and variety of fossils in the Cuyo region, and defined a lot of new taxa, including several genera and species of amphibians and reptiles. Most of them are Triassic and Jurassic taxa, but also some Cenozoic forms. Since C. Rusconi resigned as the director, no more paleontological research has been done from the museum, but its collections has been reviewed and increased. From 1970s onward, C. Rusconi´s taxa have been object of taxonomic revisions; even though many resulted to be nomina dubia, others were confirmed as valid taxa. A later significant contribution to the museum collection of fossil reptiles came from an inter-institutional fieldwork season to the south of the province in 1996, among members of the Museo Moyano, the Museo de Ciencias Naturales of San Juan, and the Chicago University (USA), which gave place to the discovery of Cretaceous dinosaur remains. Sporadically, different specimens from the Triassic of Cacheuta-Potrerillos area and even from the late Oligocene of southern Mendoza have been posteriorly incorporated. At present, the Paleovertebrate collection of the Museo Moyano was incorporated to the National System of Biological Data and to the international network Global Biodiversity Information Facility.