INGEMMET DISCOVERS A NEW 457-MILLION-YEARS MARINE FOSSIL AND PAYS TRIBUTE TO THE “FATHER OF PERUVIAN GEOLOGY”

On the occasion of the National Geology Day, The Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Institute – INGEMMET announced the discovery of a new 457-million-years marine fossil. It is identified as a marine gastropod which has been found in Calapuja Formation near to Calapuja in Puno.

Thus, the fossil has been named Phragmolites lissoni in honor of Carlos I. Lisson Beingolea (1868-1947), recognized as the “Father of Peruvian Geology”. He was a mining engineer, geologist, paleontologist, university professor, founder and also the first president of the Geological Society of Peru. Besides, he was born on September 17, 1868, that is why, in honor of his birth, the National Geology Day is celebrated in our country.

The fossil is a mollusc that belongs to the genus Phragmolites. Twenty valid species are already known and distributed in rocks from the Ordovician period in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, India, Russia and Kazakhstan. To these countries, this fossil is now added its first find in South America.

The Phragmolites lissoni new species has been formally characterized by specialist paleontologists such as Jan Ove R. Ebbestad, a researcher from the Museum of Evolution of Uppsala University - Sweden and also Juan Carlos Gutiérrez-Marco, author of the discovery in that area and member of the Institute of Geosciences of the CSIC, in a work published by the North American journal of Paleontology.

After researches in Europe, the fossils were all repatriated and also cataloged in the paleontological collection of INGEMMET. In turn, MSc. Susana Vilca Achata, Executive President of INGEMMET mentioned a fossil dedicated to Carlos Lisson, who was a pioneer in paleontological studies in our territory, is considered as a great honor for Peruvian science. This is also due to his analysis of ammonites that he introduced research on fossil molluscs in the Peru.

From a scientific perspective, Phragmolites lissoni new species has the additional interest of being the only representative of the genus recorded in shallow marine environments and temperate waters during the Ordovician Period. It is because all other Phragmolites species are associated with paleotropic sedimentary media rich in limestone, from significantly deeper and warmer waters than those evidenced in the Peruvian Andean deposit.