Publication Date
12-31-1981
Series Number
185
Abstract
Specimens from Paleocene strata of the Nacimiento Formation in Kutz Canyon, San Juan Basin, New Mexico, add to our knowledge of the poorly known taeniodont genus Conoryctella Gazin, 1939 and provide evidence for its taxonomic revision. C. dragonensis Gazin, 1939 is only known with certainty from its type specimen from the Dragon local fauna, North Horn Formation in east-central Utah, although a poorly preserved maxillary fragment and canine of uncertain provenance from the San Juan Basin, New Mexico, may pertain to this taxon. C. pattersoni, new species, differs from C. dragonensis in its smaller size, less molariform P4 and relatively narrow upper molars. It is known from: dental remains from the Dragon local fauna previously referred to C. dragonensis by Gazin (1939, 1941); dental remains from Torrejonian strata in Kutz Canyon referred by Wilson (1956, p. 82) to "conoryctine, n. gen. and sp."; and newly discovered dental and postcranial remains from a horizon in Kutz Canyon that, based on magnetostratigraphy (Tomida and Butler, 1980), is temporally equivalent to the Dragon local fauna. The occurrences of Conoryctella in the San Juan Basin extend the geographic range of the genus and also extend its time-stratigraphic range into a typical Torrejonian horizon. These extensions further reduce the distinctiveness of the Dragon local fauna, supporting recent arguments that the Dragon local fauna should be considered early Torrejonian in age.