New Devonian fossil localities in Bolivia

An examination of Palaeozoic sections west of Cochabamba, and west of Lake Poopَ, in western Bolivia, was conducted during a field expedition in 1991. The Rيo Iglesiani valley, west of Cochabamba, surprisingly yielded a Middle Devonian age to all the visited sites, originally supposed to be Ordovician. This result is based on spores, shelly faunas (brachiopods and bivalves), and trilobites. The Copacabana de Andamarca section, west of Lake Poopَ, is also dated as Middle Devonian on account of its rather rich fauna (bryozoans, corals, brachiopods, conulariids, hyolithids, tentaculitids, ostracodes, trilobites, crinoids, vertebrates). Both localities correlate to the Icla and/or Huamampampa Formation of the Tarabuco area and Subandean belt, and to the Belén and/or Sica Sica Formation of the northern Altiplano.