EARLY PERMIAN TERRESTRIAL VERTEBRATE FAUNA FROM RICHARDS SPUR, COMANCHE COUNTY, OKLAHOMA: COMPARISON OF COUNTING METHODS

The Richards Spur locality of Comanche County, Oklahoma preserves a diverse and abundant terrestrial vertebrate fauna of Early Permian age. The fauna is preserved within fissure fills that are now exhumed by the modern quarrying operations in the area. Attempts to reconstruct the paleoecology of the fauna immediately run into the problems of the lack of in-place collections and the intrinsic difficulties of counting vertebrate fossil remains. To address these problems two counting methods: Minimum Number of Individuals (MNI) and Number of Identified Specimens (NISP) were compared for three data sources: aggregated data from the published literature, cataloged specimens (published and non-published) from museum collections and counts of specimens from collected bulk samples. Preliminary results show a strong correspondence of rank abundance between MNI and NISP for all data sources. While a total evidence approach that utilizes literature, museum collections and bulk data is desirable, these data show that similar results can be achieved with any method.