COMPARATIVE PALEOECOLOGY ACROSS THE BANNOCKBURN FORMATION: SUMMARIZING FAUNAL DIVERSITY WITHIN NEW ZEALAND’S ST. BATHANS ASSEMBLAGE

Through the Miocene, New Zealand’s Central Otago region was dominated by a series of massive, interconnected lakes. These lakes, and the organisms that dwelled both within and alongside them, are documented by the Saint Bathans faunal assemblage; which also serves as New Zealand’s sole terrestrial vertebrate fossil locality. Understanding the paleoecology of these historic sites is central to understanding the island’s larger evolutionary history, a much-debated subject. This project conducts a faunal inventory of Croc Site and HH0, two major fossil-yielding sites from the Saint Bathans locality. We found significant evidence that these two sites were located in different paleoecological niche environments within the larger ecosystem. Based on the abundance of terrestrial avian fauna, and the presence of thrombolite matting, results indicate that HH0 was located along a shallow shoreline of the paleolake Manuherikia. Croc Site was dominated by teleosts, and nearly all avian remains were belonging to waterbirds, such as duck (Anseriformes), indicating that Croc Site was located within deeper water away from the paleoshoreline. This result demonstrates the continued value of paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the ecosystems preserved across the Saint Bathans assemblage in order to understand the diversity of New Zealand’s Miocene environment, and the importance of further research.