A Comprehensive Review of the Tetrapod Fauna of the Purbeck Limestone Group (Tithonian–Berriasian) of Dorset, southern England

The Purbeck Limestone Group of Dorset, in southern England, records one of the richest mid-Mesozoic tetrapod assemblages in the world. Since the first documented excavations in the mid-1850s, the Purbeck has produced a diverse micro- and macrofauna of more than 60 species of both small and large-bodied tetrapods. Here we provide an overview of the lithostratigraphy of the Purbeck Limestone Group of Dorset, a review of the tetrapod fauna currently known from the assemblage, and the stratigraphic ranges of tetrapod species within the sequence. We find that the stratigraphic distribution of major taxa are largely restricted to the Marly and Cherty Freshwater Beds of the traditional “middle” Purbeck in the earliest Cretaceous, which we attribute to a combination of anthropogenic, taphonomic and palaeoenvironmental biases. We reaffirm that the Dorset outcrop of the Purbeck Limestone Group documents an important Berriasian fauna, and highlight poorly- and potentially fossil-rich non-sampled layers in both the “lower” and “upper” Purbeck sequence that have the potential to extend the stratigraphic range of the fauna into the Jurassic, and which should be the primary focus for future collection efforts.