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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 May 2016
Paleocene spatangoids are unknown from the Antilles, apart from evidence from trace fossils. The peak of spatangoid diversity was the Eocene. Jamaican Oligo-Miocene spatangoids have a relatively low diversity compared with that of the Antillean region. Plio-Pleistocene spatangoids are poorly known from the Antilles (four genera), in contrast to the Oligo-Miocene (16 genera) and Holocene (17 genera). The depauperate Paleocene and Plio-Pleistocene spatangoid faunas are probably in part artifacts of incomplete sampling, facies-related absences, outcrop area effects and the relative brevity of these stratigraphic intervals.
To the large echinoid fauna of the Swanswick Formation (Middle-Upper Eocene) of Jamaica is added the schizasterid Aguayoaster schickleri new species. This is the first record of this genus outside Cuba; it is distinctly more elongate than all other known specimens of this genus. The schizasterid Caribbaster loveni (Cotteau, 1875) is recorded from the Swanswick Formation for the first time, the youngest occurrence of this genus in Jamaica. The coeval Claremont Formation has not previously yielded spatangoid echinoids; the brissid Eupatagus cf. antillarum (Cotteau) from a new locality is the first spatangoid known from a lagoonal unit of the White Limestone Group.