5 km west of Yamanapalli (Jurassic to of India)

Where: Andhra Pradesh, India (19.1° N, 79.9° E: paleocoordinates 29.2° S, 33.7° E)

• coordinate stated in text

When: Upper Member (Kota Formation), Sinemurian to Sinemurian (199.3 - 182.7 Ma)

• "On the basis of fishes, the Kota Formation has long been considered to be of Liassic age (King 1881; Robinson 1970). However, several workers noticed the similarity of Kota fishes with the European Toarcian fishes (Schaeffer and Patterson 1984). Patterson and Owen (1991) suggested that the major marine transgression during the Toarcian might have been instrumental for the invasion of the European Liassic fishes in the circumtethyean continents including parts of Indian subcontinent. Recovery of Darwinula, an early Middle Jurassic ostracod, led Govindan (1975) to suggest a Middle Jurassic age for the Kota Formation. Analysing the faunas of the underlying Dharmaram Formation and of the lower and upper units of the Kota Formation and comparing them with faunas from coeval horizons, Bandyopadhyay and Roychowdhury (1996) and Bandyopadhyay and Sengupta (2006) suggested that the Lower Kota Formation has an age ranging from Sinemurian to Pliensbachian, while the age of the upper Kota is Toarcian and may even be extended to Middle Jurassic (?Aalenian)." (Bandyopadhyay et al. 2010: Palaeontology 53: 533-569)

• bed-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: fluvial-lacustrine; gray, green, calcareous mudstone and limestone

• The Kota Formation, on lithological grounds, has been considered to comprise fresh water deposits (Robinson, 1970; Rudra, 1982). The fauna, in general, is also suggestive of a dominantly fresh water depositional environment
• The clay is soft, slightly calcareous and greenish grey to buff

•The highly fossiliferous limestone in the Kota Formation is well known for its fish fauna which consists of Lepidotis, Paradapedium, Tetragonolepis, Pholidophorous (Jain, 1983; Yadagiri and Prasad, 1977), and Indocoelacanthus (Jain, 1974). Recently, a cryptodire turtle (Indochelys, very similar to Kayentachelys from the Kay enta Formation of Arizona, U.S.A.) has also been found (Datta et al., 2000). The mudstone immediately underlying this limestone has yielded the sauropod dinosaur Barapasaurus tagorei (Jain et al., 1975) and Kotasaurus yamanapalliensis (Yadagiri, 1987). This mudstone also produced remains of several symmetrodont mammals. In addition to their vertebrates these limestone and mudstone beds of the Kota Formation contain numerous charophytic gyrogonites (Fiest et al., 1991; Bhattacharya et al., 1994), fossil wood, conchostracans (namely, Cyzicus and Palaeolimnidae [Tasch et al., 1973]), and the fresh water ostracod Darwinella (Govindan, 1975)

Size class: mesofossils

Collected in 1978-79

Collection methods: sieve,

• Geological Survey of India (GSI) collection.

•About 12 tonnes of clay was collected during the field season of 1978-79. The clay is soft, slightly calcareous and greenish grey to buff. The clay matrix was disintegrated by soaking in water, then washed and screened through a series of sieves of different meshes and subsequently dried. The mammalian remains recovered from the dried samples consist of a large number of isolated teeth, a few of which have complete crowns, but most have the roots broken off. Further material consists of broken dentaries with attached teeth and fragmentary cranial and postcranial elements.

Primary reference: P. M. Datta and D. P. Das. 2001. Indozostrodon simpsoni, gen. et sp. nov., an Early Jurassic megazostrodontid mammal from India. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 21(3):528-234 [R. Benson/R. Benson]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 131074: authorized by Roger Benson, entered by Roger Benson on 19.07.2012

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Osteichthyes
 Morganucodonta - Morganucodontidae
"Indozostrodon simpsoni n. gen. n. sp." = Indotherium pranhitai
"Indozostrodon simpsoni n. gen. n. sp." = Indotherium pranhitai Yadagiri 1984 mammaliaform
GSI Type No. 20795: right upper molar
 Therapsida - Kuehneotheriidae
Kotatherium haldanei n. gen. n. sp.
Kotatherium haldanei n. gen. n. sp. Datta 1981 mammaliaform
holotype right upper molar only; G.S.I. Type No. 19634