Before the flood: Miocene otoliths from eastern Amazon Pirabas Formation reveal a Caribbean-type fish fauna

- We describe the first Neogene marine otolith-based teleostean fauna from the Pirabas Formation Brazil.
- The fish fauna comprises 38 species typical for a tropical American shallow marine environment.
- 18 species are new to science.
- The Pirabas Fm represents the final stage of the central western Atlantic carbonate platform in northeastern South America and predates the emplacement of the Amazon delta system.
- The break of todays shallow marine bioprovince at the Amazonas delta mouth is not evident from the fish fauna of the Pirabas Fm, which shows good correlation with the Gatunian/proto-Caribbean bioprovince known from an only slightly younger time window in Trinidad and Venezuela.

The Pirabas Formation of Early Miocene age represents the final stage of the central western Atlantic carbonate platform in northeastern South America, predating the emplacement of the Amazon delta system. The otolith-based fossil fish fauna is represented by 38 species typical of a shallow marine environment. A total of 18 species are described new to science from the families Congridae, Batrachoididae, Bythitidae, Sciaenidae and Paralichthyidae. The fish fauna was associated with high benthic and planktic primary productivity including seagrass meadows, calcareous algae and suspension-feeders. The break of todays shallow marine bioprovince at the Amazonas delta mouth is not evident from the fish fauna of the Pirabas Fm., which shows good correlation with the Gatunian/proto-Caribbean bioprovince known from an only slightly younger time window in Trinidad and Venezuela. Differences observed to those Early Miocene faunal associations are interpreted to be mainly due to stratigraphic and geographic and not environmental differences. We postulate that the emergence of the Amazonas river mouth close to its present day location has terminated the carbonate cycle of the Pirabas Fm. and pushed back northwards a certain proportion of the fish fauna here described.