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Cambrian trilobites and associated fossils from the Uinta Mountains of Utah (USA)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2024

John R. Foster Open the ORCID record for John R. Foster [Opens in a new window] ,
Frederick A. Sundberg Open the ORCID record for Frederick A. Sundberg [Opens in a new window]  and
James W. Hagadorn
John R. Foster*
Affiliation:
Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum, 496 East Main Street, Vernal, Utah 84078, USA
Frederick A. Sundberg
Affiliation:
Earth and Planetary Science, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, USA
James W. Hagadorn
Affiliation:
Denver Museum of Nature and Science, 2001 Colorado Boulevard, Denver, Colorado 80205, USA
*
*Corresponding author.
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Abstract

Fossils are rare in Cambrian strata of the Uinta Mountains of northeastern Utah, and are important because they can help integrate our understanding of laterally adjacent but discontiguous rock units, e. g., the Tintic Quartzite of Utah and the Lodore Formation of Utah-Colorado. New body fossils from strata previously mapped as Tintic or Cambrian Undifferentiated, but here interpreted as the Ophir Formation, include indeterminate hyoliths and hyolithids, brachiopods including a linguloid, and the trilobites Trachycheilus Resser, 1945 and Elrathiella Poulsen, 1927. The last two assign these strata to the Ehmaniella Biozone (uppermost Wuliuan Stage; Miaolingian Series) or traditional Laurentian middle Cambrian. These data, together with fossil occurrences elsewhere in Utah, require that the Tintic Quartzite was deposited prior to and/or during the early Wuliuan, and suggest that the unit could be correlative to much of the Lodore Formation of Utah and Colorado.

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Journal of Paleontology , First View , pp. 1 - 8
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Paleontological Society

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