Discovery of Ordovician scolecodonts from Peru, with a review of Palaeozoic jawed polychaete records from South America

Abstract

The fossil record of jaw-bearing polychaetes from South America is scarce, and only a few occurrences of Ordovician scolecodonts have been reported so far. Here, we document a monospecific jawed polychaete assemblage from the Darriwilian Lenodus crassus conodont zone of the San José Formation in the eastern Cordillera of Peru. The single species, Protarabellites luztejadae sp. nov., represents the oldest record of the family Ramphoprionidae worldwide and may point to the biogeographic origin of this group in Gondwana. The reconstructed jaw apparatus of P. luztejadae bears primitive characters such as the slightly enclosed myocoele, distinguishing it from the younger members of the family and providing insights into the evolutionary relationships with other labidognath families. The described assemblage is the first record of Ordovician scolecodonts from Peru, as well as from the northern part of the Central Andean Basin, and one of very few cases from where apparatus-based classification has been applied. However, the Palaeozoic scolecodonts in South America appear to be more common than generally thought. A review of poorly known regional literature shows that scolecodonts have been mentioned in various sites from Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous–Permian strata of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and Uruguay. This highlights the potential for future scolecodont studies in South America.