A New Earliest Paleocene (Puercan) Fauna from the Denver Formation in Colorado's Denver Basin

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/bv73c0819

Abstract

Renewed collecting from an earliest Paleocene (Puercan) locality on the eastern side of the Denver Basin has produced a diverse assemblage of Puercan vertebrates. Based on its faunal composition, low observed diversity, absence of larger, more derived middle/late Puercan taxa, and close stratigraphic proximity to the well-defined Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary, the assemblage likely represents a fauna older than the Littleton Fauna and is temporally correlative to Pu1 faunas in NE Montana and Wyoming. I report the occurrence of at least three species of multituberculates including two species of Mesodma, the marsupial Thylacodon sp., and several `condylarth' species, including Protungulatum donnae, Oxyprimus galadrielae, and index taxa Baioconodon nordicum. The presence of Mesodma, O. galadrielae, and P. donnae is consistent with a Pu1 age. This study documents the southernmost early Pu1 fauna yet known, suggesting early Puercan mammalian diversity in the Denver Basin may be greater than previously thought.

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