A brief review of the benthic Mollusca of the Bowden shell bed, southeast Jamaica

Since Woodring documented c. 600 taxa of molluscs from the Pliocene Bowden shell bed, only a further 10 nominal species have been added to this fauna. The terrestrial gastropod Parachondria (Parachondria) augustae (Adams, 1849) is recorded from the Bowden shell bed for the first time. The trace fossil Teredolites longissimus Kelly & Bromley, 1984, produced by teredinid bivalves boring in wood, has not been figured hitherto from this shell bed. Apart from bivalves, gastropods and scaphopods, the fauna also includes cephalopods (teuthoid statoliths) and chitons (disarticulated valves representing at least three species). This fauna formed a focus for early attempts at Lyellian chronostratigraphy in the tropical western Atlantic. However, faunal turnovers created by late Cenozoic extinctions and radiations led to the deposit being dated as Miocene (or Oligocene) on the basis of molluscan data alone.