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Journal of Paleontology

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A New Species of Fossil Homolid Crab (Decapoda: Brachyura) from the Río Foyel Formation (Paleogene), Río Negro Province, Argentina

¹ Department of Geology, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio 44242, <rscrawfo@kent.edu>

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

	INTRODUCTION

 
A PREVIOUSLY undescribed fossil specimen of deep water crab belonging to the family Homolidae de Haan, 1839 was discovered in the collection of the Museo Paleontológica de Bariloche of Río Negro Province, Argentina. The specimen is exceptional because one of the extra-lineal flanks is present. These lateral portions of the carapace are often absent in homolid crab specimens, due to disarticulation of the carapace along the lineae homolicae (Glaessner, 1969). The specimen was collected from the (middle?) Oligocene Río Foyel Formation (Casadío et al., 2004), which crops out south of the town of San Carlos de Bariloche, in the foothills of the Andes Mountains (Fig. 1). Paleogene specimens of the Homolidae are exceedingly rare, due in large part to the lack of preserved rocks from deepwater environments (Feldmann et al., 1991), which they prefer in modern oceans. This specimen is of particular importance because it is not only the first reported fossil occurrence of the genus Paromola Wood-Mason, 1891 but also provides additional evidence as to the depositional environment of the Río Foyel Formation.

View larger version (22K):    FIGURE 1—Collection locality of Paromola vetula n. sp. specimen, near San Carlos de Bariloche, Río Negro Province, Argentina.

	GEOLOGIC SETTING