Megafauna pleistocênica em depósito fossilífero no município de Santa Cecília, Paraíba, Brasil: taxonomia e aspectos tafonômicos

Abstract

Fossils of Pleistocene megafauna are widely found across Brazilian territory, with the Northeast region having an abundance of this type of fossil record, and are commonly found in tank deposits. Among the northeastern states belonging to the Brazilian Intertropical Region (RIB), Paraíba has a diversity of fossil deposits with fossils of Pleistocene mammals containing specimens of giant sloths, mastodons and giant armadillos. The general objective of this work was to contribute to knowledge about the paleobiodiversity of Pleistocene megafauna in the state of Paraíba, through the taxonomic and taphonomic study of a fossil find in the municipality of Santa Cecília, Paraíba, Brazil. The study method consisted first of the taxonomic identification of the fossil accumulation, followed by taphonomic and paleoecological analysis with the following biostratinomic features: bone representation, physical integrity, types of breaks, abrasion, weathering and hydraulic transportability, and diagenesis analysis. The fossil material identified belongs to the species Eremotherium laurillardi, with the occurrence of more than one individual. The biostratinomic features in the fossils show that the material was exposed to the environment before burial, being accumulated in the depositional environment, making the fossil assemblage parautochthonous. The data indicated that fossil accumulation shows signs of fragmentation, abrasion, and breaks resulting from transport and reworking processes. Furthermore, with signs of temporal mixing and the process of permineralization as fossildiagenesis predominant in fossils. It can be suggested that environmental conditions varied in the Santa Cecília region similar to those inferred in studies of the Brazilian Intertropical Region (RIB) and in the paleontological sites of Paraíba for the Pleistocene, in which the region would correspond to the paleoenvironment between zones of arboreal to open savanna . It is worth mentioning that it is the first fossiliferous occurrence of fossil mammals in the municipality of Santa Cecília.