PBDB Collection

Cerro Policía (Cretaceous of Argentina)

Also known as La Buitrera Paleontological Area, LBPA, Cerro Policia

Where: Río Negro, Argentina (39.6° S, 68.7° W: paleocoordinates 46.7° S, 44.9° W)

• coordinate based on nearby landmark

• small collection-level geographic resolution

When: Candeleros Formation (Neuquén Group), Early/Lower Cenomanian (99.6 - 93.5 Ma)

• The outcrops exposed at the LBPA belong to the upper section of the Candeleros Formation, the basal unit of the Neuquén Group, which is considered to have accumulated during the Cenomanian

•Within each of these localities, snake remains were recovered from a large number of different sublocalities, sites, or one-off quarries.

• bed-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: fluvial; lithified, red sandstone

• In general, all the remains have been recovered as single, partially articulated specimens from a sandy succession that is considered to represent the interaction between fluvial and aeolian accumulations on the fringe of a large erg, the Kokorkom Desert.

• Most of the snake specimens have been collected from thick, cross-bedded sandstone beds that are related to the migration of relatively large aeolian dunes, often found associated with paleosols as evidenced by the presence of abundant rhizoliths and burrows.

Size classes: macrofossils, mesofossils

Collected by G. Turazzini

Collection methods: quarrying, mechanical, ,

• Material stored at MCPA

Primary reference: P. M. Makovicky, S. Apesteguía, and F. Gianechini. 2016. A new, almost complete specimen of Alnashetri cerropoliciensis (Dinosauria: Theropoda) impacts our understanding of alvarezsauroid evolution. XXX Jornadas Argentinas de Paleontología de Vertebrados. Resúmenes. Ameghiniana 53(6 (suppl.)):62 [M. Carrano/M. Carrano/M. Carrano]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 206599: authorized by Evangelos Vlachos, entered by Evangelos Vlachos on 21.11.2019, edited by Matthew Carrano and Eren Tasimov

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Show authors, comments, and common names

Reptilia
Squamata -	Najash sp.² Najash sp.² Apestiguía and Zaher 2006 snake
Theropoda - Alvarezsauridae	Alnashetri cerropoliciensis Alnashetri cerropoliciensis Makovicky et al. 2012 coelurosaur MCPA 377, nearly complete skeleton missing major sections of the tail
Ornithischia -	Jakapil kaniukura³ Jakapil kaniukura³ Riguetti et al. 2022 ornithischian
Eosuchia - Sphenodontidae	Tika giacchinoi¹ Tika giacchinoi¹ Apesteguía et al. 2021 lepidosaur MPCA-PV-631

¹Apesteguía et al. 2021; ²Garberoglio et al. 2019; ³Riguetti et al. 2022