Biodiversity of ecosystems in an arid setting: The late Albian plant communities and associated biota from eastern Iberia

Cortes de Arenoso section (CA). This 172 m-thick section is cropping out in a ravine in the NNW of the Cortes de Arenoso locality (Castello´n Province). The succession, sharply over- lain by marine carbonates attributed to the Mosqueruela Formation [47, 65], is dominated by fine-grained sandstones displaying large-scale planar cross-bedded sets, which laterally shift into dark mudstones and siltstones containing plant megaremains, especially abundant in the first 10–30 m of the logged section (Fig 4). The section includes heterolithic siltstone/mud- stone and sansdtone deposits displaying subaqueous tidal sedimentary structures such as dou- ble mud drapes, lenticular, flaser and wavy laminations and cross-bedded sets depicting current bipolarity (herringbone-like cross-beddings). The amber-bearing level corresponds to the La Hoya amber outcrop (not to confuse it with the Barremian compression outcrop of Las Hoyas, also in Spain). Concretely, this level is located in the uppermost mudstone interval of the section and correlates with the amber-bearing stratum described in Arroyo de la Pascueta [40, 44]. Fig 2. Synthetic stratigraphic log of the Maestrazgo Basin from the Triassic to the Upper Cretaceous. (A) The red arrow shows the location of the Utrillas Group in grey colour. Based on data from [52, 55]. (B) Detail of the lithostratigraphy of the studied succession, where the Utrillas Group Erg System overlies the coal-bearing deposits of the Escucha Formation with a regional unconformity surface (RUS), which marks the onset of the Erg System. The Utrillas Group

succession is, in turn, overlain by marine carbonate deposits of Mosqueruela Formation. Based on data from [59]. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282178.g002 PLOS ONE Late Albian desert biota from Iberia PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282178 March 2, 2023 5 / 51