New Mexico Geological Society Annual Spring Meeting — Abstracts

A taxonomically diverse assemblage of terrestrial and marine vertebrate fossils, mostly selachian, is present in the Santonian Hosta Tongue of the Point Lookout Sandstone in Bernalillo County, central New Mexico. This assemblage is derived from fine-grained, quartzose, light gray to yellowish-gray sandstone in the SE 1/4, NE 1/4, SE 1/4 sec. 9, T.11 N., R.2 W.· Fossil reptiles collected at this locality are: Trionychidae, ?Baenidae, cf. Platecarpus sp., Elasmosauridae, Crocodilia, Dromaeosauridae, Tyrannosauridae and Hadrosauridae. The most numerically abundant selachian is Scapanorhynchus raphiodon. Other selachians are: Ptychodus whipplei, Squalicorax falcatus, Odontaspis sp., Ptychotrygon triangularis, Ischyrhiza mira, Hybodus sp., Cretolamna sp., Pseudocorax sp., and Plicatolamna sp. Less readily identifiable fossils represent gars, bowfins, and batoids. Although this vertebrate fauna is younger than the vertebrate fauna from the Atarque Sandstone Member of the Tres Hermanos Formation in Socorro County described by Wolberg, the two faunas are nearly identical in taxonomic composition.