Plantain Cays (Miocene to of Panama)

Where: Bocas del Toro, Panama (9.1° N, 81.8° W: paleocoordinates 8.9° N, 80.6° W)

• coordinate estimated from map

When: Tobabe Sandstone Formation, Tortonian to Tortonian (11.6 - 5.3 Ma)

• Overlying Unit: It passes conformably up into the overlying Nancy Point Formation. Underlying Unit: The Tobabe Formation sits non-conformably upon the Miocene basement of basalt lavas, flow breccias, and volcaniclastic sediments. Thickness: 30 m. (LeBlanc 2021).

Environment/lithology: marginal marine; coarse-grained, quartzose sandstone

• The deposit represents a beach and near-shore sand body and documents the earliest stage of the marine transgression (Coates et al., 2005).
• The lowest part of unit is a poorly sorted pebble and cobble conglomerate, about 15 m thick, with a variety of sedimentary and volcanic sub angular clasts. It is unfossiliferous in its basal portion, but contains scattered, thick-shelled mollusks and occasional echinoids in the upper part, which grades insensibly into the overlying quartz sandstone that forms the rest of the formation. The sandstone is relatively clean, indurated, massive and pervasively bioturbated, coarse-grained, although thin but persistent horizons of pebble conglomerate occur and larger volcanic cobbles are scattered throughout. The flora and fauna include sand dollars, spatangoid echinoids, mollusks, including the large, thin-shelled bivalve Amusium, vermetids and serpulids, as well as fossil wood bored by terenid shipworms (Coates et al., 2005; LeBlanc 2021; Uhen et al., 2010).

Size class: macrofossils

Primary reference: J. A. Todd and J. S. H. Collins. 2005. Neogene and Quaternary crabs (Crustacea, Decapoda) collected from Costa Rica and Panama by members of the Panama Paleontology Project. Bulletin of the Mizunami Fossil Museum 32:53-85 [A. Hendy/A. Hendy]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 228707: authorized by Joanna Wolfe, entered by Arthur Lynch on 28.12.2022

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Show authors, comments, and common names
Malacostraca
 Decapoda - Leucosiidae
Leucosilia bananensis, Iliacantha panamanica
Leucosilia bananensis Rathbun 1918 crab
Iliacantha panamanica Todd and Collins 2005 crab
 Decapoda - Majidae
Thoe asperoides
Thoe asperoides Todd and Collins 2005 spider crab
 Decapoda - Calappidae
Calappa flammea
Calappa flammea Herbst 1794 box crab
 Decapoda - Raninidae
Raninoides benedicti
Raninoides benedicti Rathbun 1935 crab