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Exogyra in Upper Cretaceous chalky strata of western Kansas, U.S.A.: a biogeographic enigma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2015

Donald E. Hattin
Donald E. Hattin*
Affiliation:
Department of Geological Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington 47905
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Extract

Upper cretaceous strata of the U. S. Gulf Coastal Plain are rich in species and numbers of Exogyra, which occurs in a wide range of facies including siliciclastics, marls, and chalks. Specimens of Exogyra belonging to numerous well-defined species are also common to abundant locally in Upper Cretaceous siliciclastic rocks at many localities within the U. S. Western Interior, but the genus is exceedingly sparse in marly and chalky rocks of the same region. Intensive collecting in the chalky outcrops of western Kansas has yielded only two specimens of Exogyra, which are notable not only for good shell preservation but also for uniqueness of their respective occurrence. One of these specimens was collected from the Smoky Hill Chalk Member, Niobrara Chalk (Figure 1), and the other was collected from the Fairport Member, Carlile Shale (Figure 1). Principal paleontological works that treat the Niobrara fauna, especially including those of Meek (1876), Stanton (1893), Logan (1898), Scott and Cobban (1964), Miller (1968), and Hattin (1982), make no mention of the genus in that formation. Hattin (1962) documented a lone occurrence of Exogyra in the Fairport Member of Kansas, and sparse occurrence of E. cf. E. suborbiculata Lamarck in the Fairport was recorded by Kauffman (1961), whose material was collected in Huerfano Park, Colorado, where the member is calcareous or marly shale. Stratigraphic occurrence of the two Kansas specimens is presented in Figure 1, which also depicts ranges of other Exogyra species that have been recorded in the Upper Cretaceous of western Kansas.

Type
Paleontological Notes
Information
Journal of Paleontology , Volume 69 , Issue 1 , January 1995 , pp. 187 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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