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Catastrophic death assemblage of Chelomophrynus bayi (Anura, Rhinophrynidae) from the Middle Eocene Wagon Bed Formation of central Wyoming

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2016

Amy C. Henrici  and
Anthony R. Fiorillo
Amy C. Henrici
Affiliation:
Section of Vertebrate Fossils, The Carnegie Museum of Natural History, 4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
Anthony R. Fiorillo
Affiliation:
Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley 94720
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Abstract

A unique monospecific bonebed of rhinophrynid anurans was recently discovered in the Wagon Bed Formation (Middle Eocene, Uintan), Hot Springs County, Wyoming. The bonebed occurs on a single bedding plane within a thin sandstone layer. This unit is part of a nearshore facies of a calcium carbonate-rich lake in which the water was warm, shallow, and quiet at the site of the mortality layer.

A representative area of this bonebed, approximately 450 square centimeters in size, provides the basis for this taphonomic and paleoecologic study. This area contains approximately 600 bones and at least 19 individuals are represented. Skeletons are nearly completely disarticulated but somewhat associated, bone modification features are absent, a slight preferred orientation of the linear bones is present, and many of the lighter, less dense skeletal elements are underrepresented. Scavengers probably contributed to disarticulation of the skeletons. Bone depletion occurred by a combination of the action of scavengers, weak currents, and the sloughing off of body parts as the carcasses floated. The assemblage was not subjected to extensive winnowing by currents.

All of the specimens within this assemblage represent young adults. Because the frogs are all of the same ontogenetic age and the deposit shows no signs of time averaging, the assemblage is interpreted as the result of catastrophic death, possibly by disease, of one age class. Either a population of frogs inhabited the site where the mortality layer formed or the carcasses floated into it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Paleontology , Volume 67 , Issue 6 , November 1993 , pp. 1016 - 1026
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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