The first Tertiary (Paleocene) marine mollusks from the Eureka Sound Group, Ellesmere Island, Canada

The gastropod Drepanochilus pervetus (Stanton) and the bivalve Cytrodaria rutupiensis (Morris) occur in the Mount Moore Formation at Strathcona Fiord, west-central Ellesmere Island, northern Canada. They are the first marine mollusks identified from the Eureka Sound Group of the Canadian arctic islands. These mollusks correlate with Paleocene faunas of the Cannonball Formation of North Dakota and South Dakota, the Prince Creek Formation of northern Alaska, the Barentsburg Formation of Svalbard, and the Thanet and Oldhaven Formations of southeastern England. These occurrences imply that the earliest Tertiary Arctic Ocean molluscan fauna was compositionally distinct from coeval faunas of the northern Atlantic Ocean. -Authors