Submission Type
Poster
Abstract
The Pfeifer Shale is a 93-million-years-old rock unit belonging to the Upper Cretaceous Greenhorn Limestone broadly distributed in central Kansas, where it formed in the Western Interior Seaway, a Late Cretaceous epicontinental seaway in North America. Here, we describe fossil marine vertebrates collected from the middle portion of the Pfeifer Shale at a locality in Russell County, Kansas. Surface-collected specimens are largely represented by teeth of some extinct sharks, such as Ptychodus, Cretoxyrhina, and Squalicorax, that are typical for rock units of the Western Interior Seaway immediately above and below the Pfeifer Shale. Examination of microscopic fossils from a sediment sample collected from the site is currently underway, and the taxonomic diversity of the paleofauna is expected to increase. The deposition of the Pfeifer Shale represents the timeframe when the Western Interior Seaway was approaching the maximum transgression. Our study is thus anticipated to decipher the taxonomic composition of the marine ecosystem that existed in the middle of the Seaway during that time.
Included in
Biodiversity Commons, Laboratory and Basic Science Research Commons, Marine Biology Commons, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons
Preliminary report on fossil marine vertebrates from the mid-Pfeifer Shale (Upper Cretaceous) from central Kansas
The Pfeifer Shale is a 93-million-years-old rock unit belonging to the Upper Cretaceous Greenhorn Limestone broadly distributed in central Kansas, where it formed in the Western Interior Seaway, a Late Cretaceous epicontinental seaway in North America. Here, we describe fossil marine vertebrates collected from the middle portion of the Pfeifer Shale at a locality in Russell County, Kansas. Surface-collected specimens are largely represented by teeth of some extinct sharks, such as Ptychodus, Cretoxyrhina, and Squalicorax, that are typical for rock units of the Western Interior Seaway immediately above and below the Pfeifer Shale. Examination of microscopic fossils from a sediment sample collected from the site is currently underway, and the taxonomic diversity of the paleofauna is expected to increase. The deposition of the Pfeifer Shale represents the timeframe when the Western Interior Seaway was approaching the maximum transgression. Our study is thus anticipated to decipher the taxonomic composition of the marine ecosystem that existed in the middle of the Seaway during that time.
Comments
Co-Author Dr. Kenshu Shimada, DePaul University