Upper Cretaceous macruran decapods (lobsters) from the southeastern San Juan Basin, Sandoval County, New Mexico
— Paul T. May, Spencer G. Lucas, and Michael P. Foley, [eds.]

INTRODUCTION

Over a decade of fieldwork in the Upper Cretaceous marine strata near San Ysidro, New Mexico, has recovered five fossils of clawed lobsters, which are macruran decapods of the family Nephropidea. These fossils can be assigned to Hoploparia McCoy (1849), a well-known, widespread, and very diverse clawed lobster genus, with a fossil record of 60 species extending from the Lower Cretaceous (Valanginian) to the lower Miocene (Tshudy, 1993, 2003; Tshudy et al., 2018; Fraaije et al., 2020; Feldmann and Schweitzer, 2021). Other fossil decapods (crabs) have been reported from Upper Cretaceous strata in New Mexico, in the Semilla Sandstone of the Carlile Shale (Toolson and Kues, 1996) as well as the Fite Ranch Sandstone Member of the Tres Hermanos Formation (Schweitzer et al., 2017), both of middle Turonian age. Those specimens con sist of disarticulated chelea and a few carapaces. This is the first report of a fossil lobster from New Mexico. In this paper, NMMNH refers to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History in Albuquerque. All dimensions are given in millimeters.