Abstract

New species of the patellid gastropod genus Scutellastra are described from the lower Miocene Navidad Formation of central Chile and the lower-middle Miocene Cantaure Formation of Venezuela. Scutellastra arayae new species is the first fossil record of a patellid from Chile and S. venezuelana new species is the first from tropical America. This genus is today restricted to southern Africa and the western Pacific, with the exception of S. mexicana from Central America. Together with contemporaneous fossil occurrences in New Zealand, these new records show that Scutellastra had a much wider distribution when water temperatures were higher during the mid-Cenozoic.