Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
Department of Environmental Science and Studies and Department of Biological Sciences, DePaul University, Chicago, IL, United States of America.
PeerJ. 2022 Oct 20;10:e14190. doi: 10.7717/peerj.14190. eCollection 2022.
The Niubu fossil locality in Chiayi County, southern Taiwan is best known for its rich early Pleistocene marine fossils that provide insights into the poorly understood past diversity in the area. The elasmobranch teeth at this locality have been collected for decades by the locals, but have not been formally described and have received little attention. Here, we describe three museum collections of elasmobranch teeth ( = 697) from the Liuchungchi Formation (1.90-1.35 Ma) sampled at the Niubu locality, with an aim of constructing a more comprehensive view of the past fish fauna in the subtropical West Pacific. The assemblage is composed of 20 taxa belonging to nine families and is dominated by and . The occurrence of † is of particular importance because it is the first Pleistocene record in the area. We highlight high numbers of large teeth in our sample correlating to body lengths exceeding 4 m, along with the diverse fossil elasmobranchs, suggesting that a once rich and thriving marine ecosystem in an inshore to offshore shallow-water environment during the early Pleistocene in Taiwan.
台湾嘉义县的牛埔化石产地以其丰富的早更新世海洋化石而闻名，这些化石为人们了解该地区过去多样性提供了难得的线索。该产地的鲨鱼牙齿已被当地人收集了几十年，但尚未正式描述，也很少受到关注。在这里，我们描述了在牛埔产地采集的三个鲨鱼牙齿博物馆藏品（=697 颗），这些牙齿来自流刺鱼层（190-135 万年前），目的是构建一个更全面的亚热带西太平洋过去鱼类区系的视图。该组合由 20 个属组成，隶属于 9 个科，主要由 和 组成。 †的出现尤为重要，因为这是该地区的第一个更新世记录。我们在样本中发现了大量的大型 牙齿，与体长超过 4 米的牙齿相关，同时还有各种不同的化石鲨鱼，这表明在早更新世时期，台湾近海到外海浅水区曾经存在一个丰富而繁荣的海洋生态系统。
