??
(Callovo-)Oxfordian vertebrates are far from being poorly known !
Marine fauna includes ichthyosaurs, thalattosuchians, plesiosaurs,
turtles, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and others and are world-widely
distributed, as fossiliferous localities are known from Chile,
Argentina, Cuba, United States (Wyoming, Montana, Dakota), and of
course France and United Kingdom from which marine reptiles and
dinosaurs are known since the beginning of the XIXth century - you
know, Cuvier, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Eudes-Deslongchamps
Father & Son... Did I say that Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire were
close friends before they had the opportunity to study the Normandy
"Gavial de Honfleur" ? The first one thought these crocodiles were
evidence for extinction of species, while the second saw them as
ancestors of Extant crocodiles species. Anyway, the Oxfordian beds of
the Anglo-Paris Basin played a major role in the history of paleontology.
The Oxford Clay and contemporaneous formations (upper Callovian-lower
Oxfordian) of the Anglo-Paris Basin produced several theropods,
ornithischians, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mesoeucrocodylians,
actinopterygians, ... etc.
Actually, Middle Jurassic continental AND marine vertebrate fauna are
much more poorly known... the fossil record is a bit better for the
Callovian and Oxfordian, and becomes much better for the Kimmeridgian
and Tithonian. In Western Europe, it is related to the global
variations of the eustatic level of the sea.
See also: Gasparini Z. & Iturralde-Vinent M.A. 2004. Biogeography of
the Cuban Oxfordian herpetofauna.
(Found the pdf on the web, but doesn't seem to have been published...)
2010/4/20 Ing. Yasmani Ceballos Izquierdo <yceballos@uci.cu
<mailto:yceballos@uci.cu>>
Dear colleagues,
I trying to do a manuscript,
and I want your opinion about this question
Oxfordian vertebrates are poorly known all over the world?
Best,
Yasmani
--
Jocelyn Falconnet