Bulletin of the Mizunami Fossil Museum

Bulletin of the Mizunami Fossil Museum Vol. 51, No. 1

A beachcomber's field guide to The Palisadoes, Jamaica

Stephen K. Donovan

Published: 2024/9/19   Page: 6774

The south side of the Palisadoes near Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston, Jamaica, is a fertile collecting ground for beachcombers. Specimens from this area have informed our knowledge of Jamaican and Antillean geology and palaeontology. The beachrock of the Palisadoes is, unusually, a polymict conglomerate with clasts identifiable from the 20th Century. A cobble of pumice likely floated from Montserrat and supported pseudoplanktonic Lepas anatifera Linné, a goose barnacle. Echino-derms are common including mummified brittle stars. Fragile tests of the heart urchin Brissus unicolor (Leske) represent a genus widely dispersed in the fossil record of the Antilles. A specimen of the cida-roid Eucidaris tribuloides (Lamarck) had an aberrant apical system, composed of eleven plates with eleven genital pores.