MUS. COM9. ZOOL £/Xg LIBRARY OCCASIONAL PAPERS OCT 2 3 1978 Of the HARVARD LnC UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY The University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas NUMBER 75, PAGES 1-20 OCTOBER 3, 1978 AN EARLY MIOCENE (ARIKAREEAN) FAUNA FROM XORTHCEXTRAL FLORIDA (THE SB-1A LOCAL FAUNA) By David Frailey 1 The history of terrestrial vertebrates on the Florida peninsula after its presumed emergence in the Oligocene (White, 1942) is recorded in beach strand-line deposits and scattered karst fillings in the widespread marine limestones (see Olsen, 1965, 1968, for & a review of Tertiary localities). The fragmentation of specimens inherent in beach deposits and the rarity of known bone-bearing sinkholes, either through their absence or through lack of discovery, has created a situation in which a few small localities, often with poorly preserved specimens, achieve great importance in any recon-struction of mid-Tertiary faunal diversity in Florida. For example the Late Oligocene-Early Miocene North American Land Mammal Age, the Arikareean, is presently represented in Florida by only three local faunas: Brooksville (Patron, 1967a), Franklin Phosphate Pit No. 2 (Simpson, 1930), and SB-1A, the subject of this paper. Of these three, SB-1A has yielded the most diverse fauna and the greater number of taxonomically useful specimens. Each of the three known Arikareean local faunas of Florida presents a slightly different aspect of faunal diversitv in Florida in that each contains elements not found in the other three. SB-1A is the most unusual in this respect, and the most indicative of our present state of knowledge on this subject, in that none of its faunal members (with the possible exception of the higher taxon Anchi-tneninae) are found in any of the other two local faunas; all are newjidditions to the Arikareean record of Florida. T7n,!^ U r Un f t XatUr ?' HiSt0ry and Dt 'P art ment of Systematic* and Ecology \Z*T Y V, n maS : Lawrence ' KS 6604 '5; and, Research Associate, Timber-lane Research Organization, Route 2, Box 212B, Lake Wales FL 33853
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