First record of Late Miocene Dendrophyllia de Blainville, 1830 (Scleractinia: Dendrophylliidae) in Taiwan

The recently exposed outcrops along the Dahan River in Shulin, northern Taiwan revealed diverse and abundant marine fossils including molluscs, shark and ray teeth, sand dollars, and otoliths from a wide range of fish taxa. In addition, numerous small and fragile fossil scleractinians were found and identified here as Dendrophyl-lia sp., from the mainly azooxanthellate (90%) dendrophylliid family. Lithology of the outcrops are mainly composed of grey sandstones from the Tapu Formation (Late Miocene), overlying on a layer of basaltic tuff. The absolute age of the boundary be-tween the Tapu Formation and the underlying Nanchuang Formation is 8 Ma, which provides indications on the maximum age possible for the scleractinian fossils found in this study. Back then, the marine ecosystem in which the sampled Dendropyllia specimens grew was probably a turbid shallow coastal environment with muddy to sandy bottom, likely at the vicinity of a river estuary, as suggested by the combined presence of previously reported fish otoliths. To our knowledge, this is the first record of Dendrophyllia fossils from Taiwan.