Tephrostratigraphy and fossil mammals of the Santa Cruz Formation

FLEAGLE, JOHN; PERKINS, MICHAEL; BOWN, THOMAS; TAUBER, ADAN; DOZO, MARÍA TERESA

Denver

Congreso; Sixty-fourth Annual Meeting Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.; 2004

Society of Vertebrate Paleontology

The Santa Cruz Formation (SCF) of southernmost Argentina is exposed in outcrops from foothills of the Andes in the west to the south Atlantic shore in the east and has yielded many thousands of fossil mammals from over a dozen different localities over the past 115 years. However, except for work by Bown, Fleagle and Tauber in the last twenty years, most of the fossil mammals from the SCF have little stratigraphic context other than the name of the locality from which they were collected. In addition, the stratigraphic and temporal relationships among different localities are largely unknown and the subject of diverse views. In two expeditions (2000 and 2004) we have begun a broad attempt to determine the stratigraphic and temporal relationships among the many localities of the SCF and their associated fossil mammals, using tephrostratigraphy.