La Esfinge Paleontological site (Gran Canaria). New contributions for a better knowledge of the eastern canaries paleoclimatic history

Abstract

Pliocene marine deposits are widely represented in the Eastern Canary Islands. They are present at varied elevations in Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote Islands, with characteristic sedimentary facies and a number of fossil species, standing out among them: Grypahea virleti (Deshayes, 1832), Nerita emiliana (Mayer, 1872), Persististrombus coronatus (Defrance, 1827), Siderastraea miocenica (Osasco, 1897), Isognomon soldanii (Deshyes, 1836), Clypeaster altus (Lamark, 1816) and Otodus megalodon (Agassiz, 1843). The La Esfinge site, at La Isleta, NE Gran Canaria, shows a complex geological succession with, bottom to top: Pliocene submarine lavas in the form of pillow lavas and hyaloclastite, dated ca. 4.2 Myr (Meco et al., 2015); Pliocene sandy sedimentary beds bearing abundant marine fossil fauna; and Pleistocene lava flows and pyroclasts (Figure1). A new stratigraphic section has been done, 6 strata has been drawn and 42 different taxa has been classified. It is specially outstanding the presence of a sedimentary bed with a huge number of Lutraria oblonga (Gmelin, 1791) which are in life position and a sedimentary bed bearing (Bronn, 1860), a planktonic gastropod (Meco et al., 2016; Almenara Perera, 2021).