Santana Group
Geologic group
The Santana Group is a geologic group, formerly included as the middle part of the Araripe Group, in the Araripe Basin of northeastern Brazil. The group comprises the Crato, Ipubi and Romualdo Formations and is dated to the Aptian to Albian stages of the Early Cretaceous. The formations of the group were deposited in a lacustrine to subtidal shallow marine environment in the Araripe rift basin.
The Santana Group has provided a rich assemblage of fossils; flora, fish, arthropods insects, turtles, snakes, dinosaurs including Irritator, and pterosaurs such as Thalassodromeus. The stratigraphic units of the group contained several feathers of birds, among those the first record of Mesozoic birds in Brazil. The Romualdo and Crato Formations are renowned for their excellent conservation and designated Lagerstätten. In 2006, the Araripe Basin was designated a UNESCO Global Geopark.
Description
The Santana Group was formerly described as belonging to the Araripe Group. The fossiliferous Santana Formation was previously defined as containing the Crato and Romualdo Members, but redefinition of the stratigraphy led to the establishment of the Santana Group, replacing the middle part of the Araripe Group and the former Crato, Ipubi and Romualdo members were elevated to separate formations.
Basin history
The tectono-sedimentary evolution of the Araripe Basin, located in the Borborema Geologic Province, encompasses four stages, with five tectonostratigraphic phases:
1) Syneclise phase - Silurian to Devonian - characterized by tectonic quiescence in the Borborema Province.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q60785645. Authority coordinates are -5.600, -64.300. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “Santana Group” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.