Análisis comparativo de los moluscos Plio-Cuaternarios de la Costa y Galápagos: Revisión y caracterización de la colección de fósiles del Museo Petrográfico.

Abstract

The Petrography Museum of the EPN, has collected samples of rocks, minerals and fossils for more than 50 years. The collection of fossils, which presented a state of carelessness, represented an important source of information, not only for educational purposes, but also for research purposes. For this reason, this work focused on the revision and updating of the collection of fossils, with emphasis on the subcollections of molluscs. For that, the inventory, reorganization, codification, labeling and generation of a database were carried out, resulting in an organized collection of fossils with their relevant information. 257 specimens of Plio-Quaternary marine molluscs from the coastal region of Ecuador and Galápagos of the collection were taken into account for detailed studies. A total of 131 species of molluscs were identified and updated systematically, including 33 fossil species that are cited for the first time in the Ecuadorian fossil record. The collected of the occurrence of the species of the collection in time, allow to obtain four main patterns: 1) species that disappeared in the Mio-Pliocene, 2) species that appeared from Plio-Pleistocene, 3) species with continuous occurrence and 4) species with sporadic occurrence. Finally, an analysis was made of the geographic distribution of the species of the collection that showed a tendency of high similarity of the faunas between the coastal zones and Galapagos.