Clinker Hill, Blackwater coal mine (Leu coll.) (Permian of Australia)

Where: Queensland, Australia (23.8° S, 148.7° E: paleocoordinates 57.3° S, 138.1° E)

• coordinate stated in text

• small collection-level geographic resolution

When: Rangal Coal Measures Formation, Changhsingian (254.2 - 252.2 Ma)

• Uppermost division of Blackwater Group. The main fish horizon located in Utah's Blackwater opencast mine lay 6m above the Argo (or Main Lower) Seam, near the bottom of the Rangal Coal Measures. The similarity in the fish material recovered from the open-cast mine, and from the baked shales exposed at the surface on Clinker Hill (where both specimens of Bowengriphus perphlegis were found), suggests that they represent the same fauna.

• group of beds-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: lacustrine; lithified, red shale

• Red baked shale deposit

Size class: macrofossils

Preservation: adpression, soft parts

Collected by Michael Leu in 1985

• In the mid-1980s Michael Leu, then at Macquarie University, Sydney, visited Utah's Blackwater Mine on several occasions and, with the assistance of Utah management and several colleagues, quarried the fossil fish site on Clinker Hill. Leu confirmed the presence of several lacustrine mass-mortality horizons in the Rangal Coal Measures that yielded a rich and diverse fish fauna.

Primary reference: M. R. Leu. 1989. A Late Permian freshwater shark from eastern Australia. Palaeontology 32(2):265-286 [M. Clapham/M. Clapham]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 117016: authorized by Matthew Clapham, entered by Matthew Clapham on 14.09.2011

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Odontogriphidae
  - Odontogriphidae
Bowengriphus perphlegis n. gen. Ritchie and Edgecombe 2001
Chondrichthyes
 Euselachii -
Surcaudalus rostratus n. gen. n. sp.
Surcaudalus rostratus n. gen. n. sp. Leu 1989 elasmobranch