Contribution to the reappraisal of the mid Paleogene ichtyofauna of Western Africa with three new enigmatical elasmobranchs from Thanetian–Lutetian of Senegal

Abstract

We report here three new elasmobranch fossil taxa from Thanetian–Lower Lutetian nearshore marine deposits of northeastern (Matam region) and central-western (Sine-Saloum region) Senegal. These three new taxa represent the oldest species of the enigmatical elasmobranch Odontorhytis, the oldest putative representatives of marine potamotrygonid, and an uncertain dasyatoid genus with the smallest grinding dentition ever described. These new taxa, representing the second Cenozoic elasmobranch remains formally described from Senegal, broaden our understanding of their evolutionary and biogeographic history in the equatorial Eastern Atlantic during this time period. Their occurrences confirm hypothesised stratigraphically correlations between the top of Matam Fm. and the base of Lam Lam Fm., refine the marine connections between these two Senegalese regions, and suggest that these genera were broadly distributed within the shallow marine settings of the equatorial Eastern Atlantic during latest Paleocene–early Middle Eocene.