RESEARCH· ·1970·

GE~OLOGICAL SURVEY RESEARCH 1970
TRIASSIC CONODONTS FROM ISRAEL
By JOHN W. HUDDLE, Washington, D.C.
Abstract.-A conodont fauna, dated as Carnian by ostracodes
from the Sa'haronim }!"'ormation at Makhtesh Ramon in southern
Israel contains species characteristic of the so-called Cretaceous
conodont fauna of the Cameroons, Africa. Elements of the same
fauna are found in upper Middle (or lower Upper?) Triassic
rocl\:S in Sardinia, Spain, and Nevada. These occurrences suggest
a third Middle Triassic conodont faunal province to the
south of the Alpine province and central European Muschelkalk
province. This conodont fauna suggests a late Ladinian rather
than early Carnian Age for the lower part of the limestonegypsum
member of the Sa'haronim Formation, but the Carnian
Age as determined by ostracodes is tentatively accepted. Fish
remains described by Cherchi in 1967 as conodonts and one
holothuroid sclerite are illustrated.
figure 2 of Sohn (1968). The coordinates given are
those on the grid map of Israel. The stratigraphic
position of the collections made by Nathan Schulman
are shown in figure 1 of this paper.
Rocks of
Triassic conodonts from Israel were first reported
by Sohn and Reiss (1964), but earlier, Eicher (1946)
reported Triassic conodonts from a nearby locality in
the Sinai Peninsula at approximately the same horizon.
Eicher's report was greeted with skepticism by
Branson and l\1ehl (Eicher, 1946, p. 616). Since then,
large Triassic conodont faunas have been described in
E\lrope, Asia, and North America, as a result of which
Triassic conodonts are well enough known to be useful
in correlation. The conodonts reported by Sohn and
Reiss (1964) were collected by I. G. Sohn, supported
by National Science Foundation grant G-24305, and
by Nathan Schulman, of the Department of Geology
of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The specimens
were given to 1ne for study and description by I.
G. Sohn, U.S. Geological Survey. Permission to publish
was graciously granted by Prof. Y. 1{. Bentor
when he was Director of the Geological Survey of
Israel. Nathan Schulman provided the sections used
in figure 1.
COLLECTING LOCAliTIES
The conodonts described here were collected in the
eastern part of the Makhtesh Ramon in southern Israel.
The localities are shown in figure 1 of Sohn
( 1968), and the stratigraphic position of the collection
from USGS l\1esozoic locality 29183A is shown in
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