Vertebrate paleobiodiversity of the Early Cretaceous (Berriasian) Angeac-Charente Lagerstätte (southwestern France): implications for continental faunal turnover at the J/K boundary

This contribution describes the continental micro- and macrovertebrate fauna of Angeac-Charente (Berriasian, Early Cretaceous). The rich and diversified fauna indudes at least 38 different vertebrate taxa from all major clades, and is represented by more than 50 000 specimens. The Angeac-Charente locality includes the most diverse earliest Cretaceous mixed continental bonebed and the only Lager-statte known to date in the World, and it provides a good picture of a Purbeckian paleocommunity. It includes remarkable taxa such as a new ornithomimosaur, a large turiasaur, an helochelydrid turtle and numerous mammals. The vertebrate fauna of Angeac-Charente has beyond all a Purberckian character. Many exclusively European genera and species belong to families with an essentially Laurasian paleogeographic distribution. Some taxa nevertheless suggest dispersal events between Africa and Europe at the Jurassic/Cretaceous transition. The successive Charentese faunas of Chassiron (Tithonian), Cherves-de-Cognac (Berriasian) and Angeac-Charente improve our poor knowledge of the evolution of continental vertebrate faunas at the Jurassic/Cretaceous transition. Rather than reflecting an important faunal turnover between the Tithonian and the Berriasian, they record environmental changes related to the sea-level regression that characterizes the end of the Jurassic.