Dominican amber, La Toca (Work collection) (Miocene to of Dominican Republic)

Where: Dominican Republic (19.5° N, 70.7° W: paleocoordinates 19.3° N, 69.5° W)

• coordinate based on nearby landmark

• hand sample-level geographic resolution

When: El Mamey Formation, Burdigalian to Burdigalian (20.4 - 13.8 Ma)

• Older dates for Dominican amber were Upper Eocene or Oligocene, but it is now dated as Miocene.

• bed-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: fluvial-deltaic; sandy shale and pebbly amber

• "shale-sandstone interspersed with a conglomerate of well-rounded pebbles"

Size class: macrofossils

Preservation: soft parts, amber

Collection methods: unnumbered specimen in the private collection of J. Work

Primary reference: G. O. Poinar, Jr. and D. C. Canatella. 1987. An upper Eocene frog from the Dominican Republic and its implication for Caribbean biogeography. Science 237:1215-1216 [J. Alroy/J. Alroy]more details

Purpose of describing collection: general faunal/floral analysis

PaleoDB collection 75094: authorized by John Alroy, entered by John Alroy on 22.09.2007, edited by Camila Martinez and Terri Cleary

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Amphibia
 Salientia - Eleutherodactylidae
Eleutherodactylus sp. Duméril and Bibron 1841 frog
Reptilia
 Squamata - Gekkonidae
Sphaerodactylus dommeli n. sp.2 Bohme 1984 round-fingered gecko
ZFMK 66238 (holotype), an amber-embedded articulated specimen preserving the integument and nearly complete cranial and postcranial elements, tail vertebrae missing, possibly due to regeneration during life; SMNS Do–3584, a much smaller articulated specimen with autotomized tail.
Sphaerodactylus ciguapa n. sp.1 Daza and Bauer 2012 round-fingered gecko
MCZR-186380 (holotype), amber-embedded, nearly complete skeleton with patches of integument.
Myriapoda
 Chilopoda -
Chilopoda indet. centipede
"a large centipede"
Insecta
 Diptera -
Diptera indet. Linnaeus 1758 fly
"numerous fly maggots"
Trithrinax
  -
Trithrinax dominicana3 Poinar 2002
"flower"
Palaeoraphe dominicana
  -
Palaeoraphe dominicana4 Poinar 2002
Flower Sd–9–158 (Dominican amber)
Roystonea
  -
Roystonea palaea4 Poinar 2002
Staminate flower (Sd–9–101A), pistillate flower (Sd–9–101B)