Historical molluscs from Río Lagartos coastal lagoon, Mexico

This dataset contains mollusc shells from Río Lagartos coastal lagoon, Yucatan, Mexico and were sampled from the three short sediment cores. The coastal lagoon is hypersaline, with a gradient from the head near El Cuyo (>70 PSU) to the western seaward region near the town of Río Lagartos (33-38 PSU). Cores were taken with a hand-driven piston-corer that used transparent polycarbonate core barrels. Cores from three sites were analyzed: cores 4A and 4B were located in the lagoon, south of the salt productions ponds, whereas core 6A was collected farther east in the channel, near the El Cuyo Basin. Sediment sampling took place on 25-27 July 2017. Each sediment core was sectioned vertically at ~1-cm (cores 4A and 6A) or ~5-cm intervals (core 4B). A total of 18,778 mollusc specimens, representing 20 bivalves and 44 gastropods species, and belonging to 35 families and 49 genera. Each mollusc specimen was assigned a catalog number and deposited at the “Colección de Moluscos de la Península de Yucatán” (CMPY), Unidad Multidisciplinaria de Docencia e Investigación Campus Sisal, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México.