The Cretaceous Bagh Formation, India: a Gondwanan window onto Turonian shallow-water echinoid faunas

The Bagh Formation of Madhya Pradesh (India) has yielded a rich echinoid fauna, but dating of this sequence has so far been controversial. The marine invertebrate faunas come from a condensed shallow-water succession of carbonates interrupted by several well-marked hardgrounds and depositional hiatuses. Eleven echinoid species (one of them new to science) are recognized and their distribution within the Bagh Formation is recorded. Five of these species have previously been recorded from strata in the Antantiloky region of Madagascar that are securely dated as late Turonian on the basis of associated ammonites. A further species is restricted to Turonian sediments in Egypt. The previously reported Cenomanian aspect of this fauna reflects the paucity of comparable shallow-water Turonian faunas from Europe and North Africa.