Jurassic Coleoidea of New Caledonia

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Abstract
Coleoids are more diverse in the Jurassic of New Caledonia than previously reported. They are widespread and sometimes abundant in the shallow-water West Coast facies Lower and Middle Jurassic and rare in the more off-shore Central Chain facies Upper Jurassic. The fauna consists of a rare Sinemurian aulacocerid, Ausseites sp. nov., and seven taxa of Belemnitida, most of which are rare and poorly preserved, and are presented in open nomenclature only. Belemnopsis kuntkotensis var. puenensis Avias 1953 is synonymised with B. compressa Avias 1953, which is the most widespread New Caledonian belemnite and is about Bathonian-Callovian in age. Dicoelites aviasi sp. nov. immediately predates it. Other taxa include Belemnopsis, Dicoelites, Hibolithes and a new genus of Belemnitidae. The New Caledonian Jurassic fauna, coleoids excepted, is generally present also in New Zealand rocks, but not a single coleoid taxon is yet known to be common to the two. The absence of the New Caledonian taxa from New Zealand collections is explained more by a combination of absence of precisely time-equivalent strata, slight ecologic differences and perhaps by non-discovery rather than by zoogeographic provincial differences.

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