Allan J LernerNew Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science
Allan J Lerner
MS
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47
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Publications
Publications (47)
Vaderlimulus tricki Lerner, Lucas & Lockley, 2017, known only from a holotype, was the first documented horseshoe crab (Xiphosurida) body fossil from the Triassic of North America. Here, we document a moderately well preserved Vaderlimulus topotype from the Olenekian (early Spathian) Thaynes Group, near Paris, Idaho, USA. The topotype provides new...
Abstract—Late Pennsylvanian to early Permian strata in central New Mexico contain an important fossil record of syncarid crustaceans consisting of two endemic taxa (Erythrogaulos carrizoensis Schram, 1984; Uronectes kinniensis Schram and Schram, 1979). We add to this record Palaeocaris secretanae Schram, 1984, from NMMNH locality 4667, near Tinajas...
Abstract—Located in the Manzanita Mountains of central New Mexico, USA, the Kinney Brick Quarry exposes a fossil Lagerstätte of Late Pennsylvanian age that produces diverse fossils, including small subspherical structures previously interpreted as fish eggs. We re-evaluate these eggs, which are spherical rings of carbon around host-sediment-filled...
The fossil record of horseshoe crabs (Xiphosurida) from the Mesozoic of North America consists of only three name-bearing specimens from the Cretaceous. We add to this depauperate record the first report of a horseshoe crab body fossil from the Triassic of North America. It comes from a locality in the Olenekian (Spathian) Thaynes Group, near Paris...
We report the occurrence of the pseudofossil Astropolithon from the lower Permian (Wolfcampian-Leonardian) Abo Formation of Socorro County, in central New Mexico. The examples reported here come from the top of an exposed sandstone bed stratigraphically high in the Abo Formation section near the base of the overlying Yeso Group, preserved in nonmar...
We document two specimens that are assigned to Paleolimulus woodae n. sp. from the Lower Mississippian Horton Bluff Formation of Blue Beach, Nova Scotia, Canada. Specific characters of this Paleolimulus include posteromarginal facets that each extend between the genal area and a triangular-shaped termination, free lobe pleurae each with the posteri...
We document body fossils of the xiphosurid (horseshoe crab) Euproops danae Meek and Worthen from lacustrine black shale of the Missourian interval of the Beeman Formation near Alamogordo, New Mexico. These xiphosau-rids, associated with conchostracans, bivalves, microconchids, fish scales and a paleoflora, are from a likely freshwater lake deposit....
We describe an arthropod body impression associated with arthropod trackways of the ichnogenus Stiaria from the Lower Permian (upper Wolfcampian) Robledo Mountains Formation (Hueco Group) in the Prehistoric Trackways National Monument of southern New Mexico. The probable producer of these traces was a scorpion, and we name the likely scorpionid res...
In 1858, Edward Hitchcock named Sphaerapus larvalis and S. magnus for burrows from the nonmarine Lower Jurassic Turners Falls Formation in Massachusetts. Walpia hermitensis White, 1929, from the Lower Permian Hermit Shale, Arizona, is also a little known ichnotaxon. Examination of the type material indicates that Sphaerapus is a senior subjective s...
Continental trace fossils of Early Permian age are well known in the western United States from Wolfcampian (~Asselian to Artinskian) strata, but few examples are known from Leonardian (~Kungurian) deposits. A substantial ichnofauna from strata of the lower part of the Clear Fork Formation at Lake Kemp, Baylor County, Texas, augments the meager Nor...
Zoophycos comprises a diverse group of spreiten structures. There are only a few published reports of Zoophycos from New Mexico and these are primarily from Carboniferous strata. Here we add to this sparse record of New Mexican Zoophycos newly discovered occurrences in the Middle Pennsylvanian (Atokan) strata of Sierra County. These burrows are int...
The Keota site, in the Middle Pennsylvanian (Desmoinesian) Keota Sandstone Member, McAlester Formation (Krebs Group) of Haskell County, Oklahoma, yields an extensive ichnofossil assemblage of arthropod trackways, insect resting traces, arthropod feeding and grazing traces, fish swimming traces, and tetrapod footprints. This ichnofossil assemblage o...
Arborichnus Ekdale and Lewis, 1991 is a junior homonym of Arborichnus Romano and Meléndez, 1985, so we propose Kauriichnus as a replacement name.
The Upper Triassic Redonda Formation, the uppermost part of the Chinle Group in east-central New
Mexico, yields extensive invertebrate and vertebrate ichnofossil assemblages that were first discovered in the 1930s. The Redonda Formation is as much as 92 m thick in its outcrop belt along the northwestern edge of the Llano Estacado (Guadalupe and Qua...
In Cañon del Cobre of Rio Arriba County, northern New Mexico, red-bed siliciclastic sediments of the Late Pennsylvanian-Early Permian Cutler Group were deposited by synorogenic fluvial systems in upland and inland settings along the flank of the Uncompahgre uplift of the ancestral Rocky Mountains. Rare lacustrine strata (thinly laminated siltstones...
ABSTRACT—Upper Pennsylvanian (Missourian) strata of the Tinajas Member of the Atrasado Formation in the Cerros de
Amado, Socorro County, include an unusual lacustrine deposit, the Tinajas locality. This locality yields a diverse fossil assemblage
of plants, crustaceans, insects, a cnidarian, molluscs and fishes from laminar black shale that contain...
Every fall since 1950, the New Mexico Geological Society (NMGS) has held an annual Fall Field Conference that explores some region of New Mexico (or surrounding states). Always well attended, these conferences provide a guidebook to participants. Besides detailed road logs, the guidebooks contain many well written, edited, and peer-reviewed geoscie...
New Mexico contains a significant record of trace fossil assemblages, in terms of both abundance and ichnodiversity, from Lower Permian nonmarine depositional settings. Most notable amongst these are the trace fossil assemblages in the Robledo Mountains Formation of the Robledo Mountains in Doña Ana County, southern New Mexico, as recognized by the...
New Mexico contains a significant record of trace fossil assemblages, in terms of both abundance and ichnodiversity, from Lower Permian nonmarine depositional settings. Most notable amongst these are the trace fossil assemblages in the Robledo Mountains Formation of the Robledo Mountains in Doña Ana County, southern New Mexico, as recognized by the...
An invertebrate ichnoassemblage from the Moenkopi Group (Spathian Ankareh Formation) at Dia-mond Creek in north-central Utah consists of Gordia marina Emmons, Helminthopsis hieroglyphica Wetzel and Bromley and irregular networks similar to Unisulcus. This is the first record of Gordia and Helminthopsis from the Moenkopi Group. This low diversity ic...
Coprolites are the least studied and most under-sampled vertebrate trace fossils. They are very common in some Triassic localities. We recognize six new coprolite ichnotaxa: Alococopros triassicus, A. indicus, Saurocopros bucklandi, Liassococopros hawkinsi, Malericopros matleyi and Falcatocopros oxfordensis. The distribution of coprolite ichnotaxa...
We report here Cochlichnus anguineus, cf. Celliforma isp., meniscate burrows, and an unassigned conical trace fossil from the Pliocene Ceja Formation of central New Mexico. This is the first report of Celliforma from New Mexico, which along with other nesting trace fossils attributed to insects are characteristic components of the Coprinisphaera ic...
Sedimentary structures resembling casts of lungfish burrows occur locally in the Upper Triassic Redonda Formation (Chinle Group) at Mesa Redonda, Quay County, New Mexico. The casts are densely concentrated over an area of about 5m 2 in a very fine-grained sandstone that represents a lacustrine margin sheetflood facies. Cylindrical cross-section and...
We document a giant terrestrial arthropod trackway assigned to Diplichnites cuithensis Briggs, Rolfe and Brannan, 1979 from the nonmarine redbeds of the Cutler Group (Late Pennsylvanian, Missourian?) in El Cobre Canyon, New Mexico, a classic Pennsylvanian-Permian vertebrate fossil locality. The El Cobre trackway is the first occurrence of D. cuithe...
A preliminary assessment of the invertebrate ichnofossil assemblage from the Union Chapel Mine (Lower Pennsylvanian, Pottsville Formation, Alabama) indicates that the assemblage is dominated by Kouphichnium isp., Arborichnus repetita, and Treptichnus bifurcus. Selenichnites, Cochlichnus, Protovirgularia, Palaeophycus, and Diplichnites gouldi are ra...
Oklahomaichnus millsii Sarjeant, from the Pennsylvanian (Missourian) Nellie Bly Formation of Oklahoma, is not the trackway of a lepospondyl amphibian, as originally proposed. Instead, it is the undertrack of an arthropod.
At a tracksite at Abo Pass in central New Mexico, USA, tetrapod tracks are found approximately 141 m above the base of the Abo Formation (Lower Permian, early ?Artinskian, Wolfcampian). The track-bearing stratum is a 0.3-1.3-m-thick, thinly bedded, fine-grained tabular sandstone with extensive ripple laminae that we interpret as a sheetflood deposi...
Projects
Project (1)
A growing collection of fossils from a site that was recently considered vexing is filled with exciting evidence of a diverse biotadated to within a famous fossil-hiatus in the record of tetrapods and terrestrial arthropods (Romer's Gap). Our project concerns the fieldwork, primary documentation and curation of this important record, personally collected and housed 'pro deo' in our private museum since 1995. This is the oldest Carboniferous tetrapod-bearing locality, with a comprehensive (2100+ specimen) collection of tetrapod footprints and trackways (occurring within over 100 stratigraphic levels within a 4 km shoreline section) that is also the oldest known diverse assemblage of tetrapod ichnofossils. The section also contains diverse invertebrate traces from several facies associations, including subaerial arthropod trails and infaunal burrows, , diverse worm burrows, and several morphotypes of fish-produced traces, as well as coprolites. There is also a diverse body fossil record containing typical elements of the Mississippian tetrapod community, including gyracanths, climatiids, chondrichthyans, abundant palaeoniscoids, rare lungfish, and the abundant rhizodontid Letognathus. Tetrapods are currently resolved as 6 morphotypes of tracks, probably 5+ morphotypes of skeletal evidence, but virtually all the tetrapod remains are fragmentary and disarticulated; associated elements are rare and articulated material still unknown.The larger sample of fish fossils have yielded articulated skeletal material for most species however, indicating there is a real expectation that articulated tetrapods will possibly one day be found here.Albeit mainly disarticulated, the bones themselves do not appear overly worn or abraided, so post mortem transport is believed to have been from relatively nearby sources. Invertebrates from the deposit include abundant ostracods, scarce spirorbids, foraminifers and conchostracans, rare horseshoe crabs (Paleolimulus woodae), and a putative millipede. The ichnofossil record co-occuring at the site further indicate the presence of scorpionids and possible arachnids. The deposit further includes a diverse Tournaisian flora dominated by arborescent lepidodendropsid lycopods, rare proto-sigillarians, abundant nearshore archaeocalamitean 'marshes', rare transitional ferns, diverse macrospores and miospores, stromatolites, and common algal laminations. Pedogenic horizons and in-situ rooted-forests and marshes occur at numerous levels in the region, and the stratigraphy is cyclic - beginning with shale facies' which was deposited beyond the wave-influenced shallowing upwards to the subaerial and terrestrial facies'. The cycles, style of sedimentation and paleontology indicate these were tempestites deposited at the landward terminus of a large, wave-dominated lagoon (marginal marine), and may have been tidally influenced and probably transgressive.
