New Mexico Geological Society Annual Spring Meeting — Abstracts

The Lamy amphibian quarry, NMMNH locality L-1176, is located in the upper Carnian Garita Creek Fonnation of the Chinle Group in Santa Fe County, NM, and is best known for its hundreds of disarticulated skulls, dentaries, shoulder girdle elements, and vertebrae of the metoposaurid amphibian Buettneria perfecta Case. Limb material from these animals is conspicuously sparse. A phytosaur, a theropod dinosaur, and three other reptiles, all of indeterminate species, are the only non-metoposaurid taxa from the quarry. Newly recovered microvertebrate fossils from a quarry block include: (1) a procoelous caudal vertebra of an archosaurian reptile, (2) fish skull elements with ornamentation characteristic of semionotids, (3) redfieldiid fish scales, and (4) cm-size skull elements from a labyrinthodont amphibian. The labyrinthodont material may not constitute a new taxon because it could represent ontogenetically young Buettneria. It includes a premaxilla with teeth, several vomer and palatine fragments with teeth, palate fangs, and a probable skull roof element.

The Lamy quarry had long been considered a drought-induced death assemblage (Romer, A.S., Scientific Monthly, Oct. 1939), but Hunt and Lucas (NMGS Guidebook, 46^th F.Conf. 1995) proposed that it represents a hydraulically-sorted deposit based on disarticulaton and
apparent sorting of the fossils. The disarticulated microvertebrate material found in the encasing matrix and in close proximity to phytosaur teeth and small metoposaur bone fragments supports this proposition. The new microvertebrates add three or four taxa to the faunal list from the quarry.