PALEONTOLOGY OF SALINAS PUEBLO MISSIONS NATIONAL MONUMENT

Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument (SAPU) in central New Mexico was founded to preserve historic and cultural resources in the form of 17^th century Franciscan missions and Native American pueblo villages, but there are also a variety of paleontological resources preserved within the park boundaries that were previously undiscovered. During the Fall of 2016 a comprehensive field inventory was conducted in order to locate, identify, and catalog these different resources. The geology of SAPU consists of four early Permian formations ranging from approximately 280 ma to 270 ma, with Quaternary alluvium covering a large portion of each of the three park units. Fossils have been found in these rock units in locations surrounding the park. However, before this survey the paleontology of the park was limited mainly to cultural artifacts with very few exceptions. This survey revealed a variety of fossils within the boundaries of the SAPU park units in addition to the identification of fossil inventories in collections and repositories. Types of fossils discovered during the course of this survey include trace fossils from vertebrates and invertebrates alike, various flora of the early Permian, a few poorly preserved marine fossils, and the articulated lower half of an early Permian synapsid. Further study of the fossil discoveries at Salinas Pueblo Missions will increase the knowledge of the terrestrial Permian environments and help to fill in the evolutionary gaps between reptiles and mammals.