Acta Palaeontologica Polonica

New sharks and rays from the Cenomanian and Turonian of Charentes, France

Romain Vullo, Henri Cappetta, and Didier Néraudeau

Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 52 (1), 2007: 99-116

New or so far poorly known neoselachians from the Cenomanian and Turonian of SW France are described. The material studied herein comes from nine localities in the Charentes region, comprising palaeoenvironments ranging from coastal to open marine environments, and consists of two orectolobiforms, six lamniforms, and four rajiforms. The new taxa are Squalicorax coquandi sp. nov. and Roulletia bureaui gen. et sp. nov. within lamniforms, and Hamrabatis bernardezi sp. nov., Archingeayia sistaci gen. et sp. nov., and Engolismaia couillardi gen. et sp. nov. within rajiforms. New specimens of Odontaspis rochebrunei Sauvage, 1880 from the type area allow redescription of this taxon, assigned herein to the genus Cenocarcharias. Occurrences of Squalicorax baharijensis, S. cf. intermedius, and Archaeolamna sp., previously unrecorded from this region, and Almascyllium, a genus generally described from younger strata, are also noted, and improve knowledge of mid-Cretaceous selachian faunas from Western Europe.

Key words: Chondrichthyes, Neoselachii, Orectolobiformes, Lamniformes, Rajiformes, Cretaceous, France.

Romain Vullo romain.vullo@univ-rennes1.fr and Didier Néraudeau didier.neraudeau@univ-rennes1.fr, Laboratoire de Paléontologie, Géosciences, UMR 6118, Université de Rennes I, 263 avenue du Général Leclerc, 35042 Rennes cedex, France; Henri Cappetta cappetta@isem.univ-montp2.fr, Laboratoire de Paléontologie, UMR 5554, Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution, Université de Montpellier II, Sciences et Techniques du Languedoc, Cc 064, Place Eugène Bataillon, 34095 Montpellier cedex 5, France.


This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (for details please see creativecommons.org), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.