The Fossil Fish Collection From Museu de Ciências da Terra, Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The fossil collection of the Museu de Ciências da Terra/RJ consists of six sub-collections (Microfossils, Paleoinvertebrates, Paleobotanics, Fish, Reptiles and Mammals) and has an invaluable historical importance. In addition, the great number of specimens of great representation of Brazilian sedimentary basins is fundamental to paleontologists and other research scientists. As the collection is organized by the number of the registry book, the analysis and correlations of basins without these numbers are difficult to perform. The aim of this paper is to present a quantitative analysis of the fossil fish collection of the Museu de Ciências da Terra, showing the representation of Brazilian sedimentary basins, with special attention to the Araripe basin because of its greatest number of specimens. Besides including foreign material, the collection of fossil fish represents 17 sedimentary basins. The Araripe Basin has 27,7% of the entire paleoictiological collection, with a total of 24 genera and one identified specimen only in the family taxonomic level. The organization of this data becomes essential to many Brazilian and foreign researchers that seek information about collection samples represented in Brazilian sedimentary basins. Thus, the BASE PALEO can enter the “Basin” field to make this information
available on the internet.