Mammals from the Purbeck Limestone Group of Dorset, southern England

The Purbeck mammalian fauna, assembled by Beckles in the last century, has long been a classical landmark in Mesozoic mammalian history. These remains consisted mainly of upper and lower jaws, rarely associated. The discovery by P. Ensom, in 1986, of a new site, which has already yielded over 800 isolated teeth, has given a new impetus to the study of this fauna. One of the main characteristics of the Purbeckian mammalian assemblage is its taxonomic diversity. All major groups of Mesozoic mammals are represented: multituberculates; non-therians: docodonts and triconodonts; therians: symmetrodonts, dryolestoids, peramurans and even tribosphenidans. The multituberculates have been reviewed in a number of papers and four new taxa of non-multituberculates have already been identified; but most of the latter, dominated by dryolestoids, await a thorough revision. This fauna appears to be more advanced than that from the Kimmeridgian of Guimarota, Portugal, while containing both primitive and derived taxa with respect to those from the slightly older Morrison Formation in the Western Interior of the USA.