The Deseado Formation of PatagoniaLoomis, Frederic Brewster
Science
The Deseado Formation of Patagonia
Loomis, Frederic Brewster
Paleontology -- Patagonia (Argentina and Chile)
Wilckens takes all of this series, from the base of the Salamanca,
up to the unconformity below the Patagonian, and makes of it his St.
George Period, a transgression epoch, lasting to the end of the Upper
Cretaceous. I believe it is all marine, and is all a part of the
Upper Cretaceous transgression of the sea over Patagonia. However the
Salamanca is a clear cut deposit and I feel it should be retained as
a distinct horizon. The overlying light colored (white, grey, brown,
yellow, or green) sandy clay shales represent a deeper water and
later facies, which is characteristically developed on the Gulf of
St. George, and may well be distinguished as the St. George epoch or
series, but I should use the term only in this more limited way. It is
the same series which Ameghino has plotted as the Notostylops beds on
his section of the coast of Patagonia. This last it certainly is not.
The unconformity between these white (or light) sandy clays and the
Patagonian represents a regression period, during which Patagonia was
not only above water, but extended an unknown distance further to the
East.
It was during this interval of time between the Upper Cretaceous and
the Lower Miocene (Patagonian) that the limited and local land deposits
known as Casamayor (= Notostylops), the Astraponotus, and the Deseado
(= Pyrotherium) and probably other beds were laid down. In each case
the age must be determined for the individual bed by its contents
mostly; for as far as I know none of them overlap anywhere.
In regard to the discussion as to whether Dinosaurs were
contemporaneous in South America with the fauna of the Deseado, I can
only say, we found no trace of a dinosaur or any other Cretaceous
animal in the Deseado beds which we worked. As the Cretaceous beds
lie as high as the Deseado and are also practically horizontally
striated, dinosaur remains might be found on the same level. I think
the assigning of any such material to these beds was due to failing
to recognize the unconformity under the Deseado beds. As to the
Notostylops fauna and dinosaurs being contemporaneous, I only worked
the Notostylops beds at Mazaredo, but there I found nothing to indicate
the contemporaneousness of these two groups. As I have shown above,
Ameghino’s idea of the extent of the Notostylops or Casamayor beds was
mostly at fault, and very much of that which he has designated as of
Notostylops age is Upper Cretaceous. It is in these Upper Cretaceous
beds that dinosaurs do occur and this seems to me to be the basis of
the confusion.
This Upper Cretaceous series is a field where considerable work may
profitably be done, in straightening out the relationships of the
various layers to each other, their extent, and their relationship to
the Salamanca and other Upper Cretaceous formations in other parts of
Argentine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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