UCMP V96001, Pondaung Sandstone (Eocene of Myanmar)

Where: Myanmar (22.0° N, 94.5° E: paleocoordinates 13.1° N, 92.9° E)

• coordinate based on unpublished field data

When: Pondaung Formation, Bartonian (41.3 - 38.0 Ma)

• The whole sequence of units was originally defined as the ‘Pondaung Sandstones’ by Cotter (1914), but the horizon yielding Eocene vertebrate fossils is now known as the ‘Upper Member’ of the Pondaung Formation (see Maung et al. 2005). The most recent age for this unit is ~39–38 Ma and so it can be regarded as middle Bartonian (see Tsubamoto et al. 2011).

• bed-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: terrestrial; brown, yellow sandstone and red, blue mudstone

• fossils come out of reddish to purplish mudstone

Size class: macrofossils

Reposited in the UCMP

• comments: "...[specimens reported in this article] have been collected over the past 80 yrs. As a consequence, most specimens have limited, descriptive locality data that provides locations based on distances from known villages. Recent fieldwork has provided detailed, GPS based mapping of the most productive outcrops and permit us to place most of the historic localities in a more accurate and stratigraphically detailed framework." Yet they only place a few localities on the figured map. EL

Primary reference: J. H. Hutchison, P. A. Holroyd, and R. L. Ciochon. 2004. A preliminary report on southeast Asia's oldest Cenozoic turtle fauna from the late middle Eocene Pondaung Formation, Myanmar. Asiatic Herpetological Research 10:38-52 [J. Alroy/E. Leckey/E. Vlachos]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 41460: authorized by John Alroy, entered by Erin Leckey on 14.07.2004, edited by Jason Head

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

• fossil wood is commonly found
Reptilia
 Testudines - Carettochelyidae
Anosteira sp., "Burmemys magnifica" = Allaeochelys magnifica
Anosteira sp. Leidy 1871 turtle
"Burmemys magnifica" = Allaeochelys magnifica Hutchison et al. 2004 turtle
 Testudines - Trionychidae
Trionychinae "large" Gray 1825 softshell turtle
 Squamata - Palaeophiidae
cf. Pterosphenus sp. Lucas 1898 snake