Marsupites

Marsupites Temporal range: Santonian ~
Marsupites testudinarius fossil
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Echinodermata
Class:	Crinoidea
Order:	†Uintacrinida
Family:	†Marsupitidae
Genus:	†Marsupites Mantell in Miller, 1821
Species
Marsupites americanus Springer 1911 Marsupites lamberti Besairie 1936 Marsupites testudinarius Schlotheim 1820

Marsupites is an extinct genus of stalkless crinoids from the Santonian stage of the Late Cretaceous.

Biostratigraphic significance

The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) had provisionally assigned the extinction of Marsupites testudinarius as the defining biological marker for the start of the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous, 83.6 ± 0.2 million years ago, until a new final definition was eventually ratified in 2022, based instead primarily on magnetostratigraphy.

Distribution

Fossils of the genus have been found in:

• Lipnik, Poland
• Haslam Formation, British Columbia, Canada

References

Bibliography

• Haggart, J. W.; Graham, R. (2018), "The crinoid Marsupites in the Upper Cretaceous Nanaimo Group, British Columbia: resolution of the Santonian-Campanian boundary in the North Pacific Province", Cretaceous Research, 87: 277–295, Bibcode:2018CrRes..87..277H, doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2017.05.029
• Lach, R.; Salamon, M. A. (2016), "Late Cretaceous crinoids (Echinodermata) from the southwestern margin of the Holy Cross Mts. (southern Poland) and phylogenetic relationships among bourgueticrinids", Paläontologische Zeitschrift, 90 (3): 503–520, Bibcode:2016PalZ...90..503L, doi:10.1007/s12542-016-0313-9, PMC 5448076, PMID 28596624
• Fossils (Smithsonian Handbooks) by David Ward (Page 173)