Artículos
A new lithographic limestone deposit in the Upper Cretaceous Austin Group at El Rosario, county of Múzquiz, Coahuila, northeastern Mexico
Un nuevo depósito de caliza litográfica en el Grupo Austin del Cretácico Superior en El Rosario, municipio de Múzquiz, Coahuila, noreste de México
ABSTRACT
At El Rosario, 170 km WNW of Múzquiz in northern Coahuila, Mexico, alternating evenly layered platy limestone and fissile marly limestone of late Turonian-early Coniacian age (Late Cretaceous) contain vertebrate fossils with exceptionally well-preserved anatomical details of their soft tissues, as well as abundant ammonoids, inoceramids and other invertebrates. Deposition was in an open marine shelf environment near the southern opening of the Western Interior Seaway, several hundreds of kilometers south of the North American coastline, in water depths of at least 50-100 m. The present research intends to highlight the enormous preservational potential of this new conservation deposit (Konservat-Lagerstätte) and to analyze the paleoenvironmental conditions present at this locality. Our preliminary data suggest that the El Rosario fossil deposit is a combined result of anoxic bottom conditions, early diagenetic phosphatization, and rapid burial in a soft, micritic lime mud.
Key words::
Upper Cretaceous, fossil preservation, Konservat-Lagerstätte, limestone, Coahuila, Mexico
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are grateful to the family of José Martínez from Múzquiz for taking us to the El Rosario quarry and col-lecting the first fossils for us. We also acknowledge the preparation of the fossil specimens by Stefan Unrein and Frank Wittler (both UKRG), the microprobe analysis of some fossils by Volker Zibat (University of Karlsruhe) and logistical support by the Museo del Desierto, Saltillo, the Asociación de Paleontólogos Aficionados de Sabinas (PASAC), notably Héctor Porras-Muzquiz, and the Facultad de Ciencias de la Tierra, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Linares. We thank Luis Espinosa Arrubarrena and Walt Haenggi for their careful and constructive reviews of the manuscript. The Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia in Mexico kindly permitted the temporary exporta-tion of Múzquiz fossils to Karlsruhe, Germany. Financial support to this project was provided by the Volkswagen-Stiftung (Volkswagen Foundation, project number I/78866) and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (STI 128/9 and FR 1314/9).
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