DONATION OF A LARGE PRIVATE COLLECTION EXPANDS THE MARINE MAMMAL ASSEMBLAGE FROM THE MIOCENE-PLIOCENE PUNGO RIVER AND YORKTOWN FORMATIONS

The Lee Creek Mine in Aurora, NC, is an open-pit phosphate mine operated by the Potash Corporation. The mine exposes two fossiliferous marine units: the Pungo River Limestone (middle Miocene; Langhian), and the Yorktown (lower Pliocene, Zanclean) formations. The Pungo River Limestone and base of the Yorktown Formation are richly phosphatic and are commercially mined. These two units have yielded one of the most important assemblages of Neogene marine vertebrates in the world, including hundreds of species of sharks, rays, skates, bony fish, birds, sea turtles, estuarine crocodiles, seals, walruses, dolphins, and baleen whales. These fossils are found in-situ as well as in reworked sediments in the spoils leftover from the mining. Unfortunately, the mine has been closed to the public since 2009.

The Mace Brown Museum of Natural History at the College of Charleston (CCNHM) recently acquired a large donation of vertebrate fossils (n=16,513) from the Lee Creek mine collected by former mine tour leader Rita McDaniel. Ms. McDaniel recently passed away and desired that her spectacular collection be made available to science. This collection notably includes specimens including shark teeth, fish bones and teeth, bird bones, seal bones and teeth, a walrus tusk and astragalus, and hundreds of cetacean rostromandibular fragments, teeth, bullae and periotics, including many new records of cetaceans from both the Pungo and Yorktown formations.

New cetacean records from the Pungo River Formation include Xenorophidae indet., Kogia sp., Ziphiidae indet. (Messapicetus?), cf. Hadrodelphis, cf. Goniodelphis, two additional squalodontids, Parietobalaena sp., Diorocetus sp.; new records from the Yorktown Formation include and cf. Herpetocetinae n. g., cf. Fragilicetus, making this one of the most significant collections from Lee Creek.