Abstract
A biochronologic framework for Eocene deposits in the Rocky Mountain Interior of North America has been developed over nearly one and a half centuries of study of these sequences and the biotic components contained within them. The definition of a series of North American Land Mammal Ages (NALMAs) for the Eocene (and other epochs) was based directly on these studies (Wood et al., 1941) with subsequent refinement required as knowledge of faunas and geographic coverage broadened (Krishtalka et al., 1987). Eocene NALMAs include from oldest to youngest: the Wasatchian, Bridgerian, Uintan, Duchesnean, and Chadronian (Prothero and Swisher, 1992). In every case, the faunal samples used to define each of these ages are derived from richly fossiliferous lowland areas usually found near the centers of intermontain basins where thick sequences of fluvial rocks were deposited. As such, faunal samples derived from a relatively limited number of habitats are those that represent the “type faunas” for each land mammal age and the stratigraphic ranges of contained taxa are based on first and last appearances as documented in these samples.
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Gunnell, G.F., Bartels, W.S. (2001). Basin Margins, Biodiversity, Evolutionary Innovation, and the Origin of New Taxa. In: Gunnell, G.F. (eds) Eocene Biodiversity. Topics in Geobiology, vol 18. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1271-4_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1271-4_16
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