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24 September 2012 First Post-Cambrian Records of the Reticulosan Sponges Valospongia and Hintzespongia from the Late Tremadocian of North Wales
Joseph P. Botting, Lucy A. Muir
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Abstract

A new sponge fauna has been discovered in silty mudstone of the early Migneintian (late Tremadocian, Ordovician) of North Wales. The assemblage is dominated by reticulosan hexactinellids, including several species bearing parietal gaps; this feature is common among Cambrian hexactinellids, but is rare in Ordovician faunas. Of particular significance is Valospongia bufo sp. nov., representing the first record of the genus outside the Middle Cambrian of Utah, USA. A single specimen assigned to Hintzespongia? sp. is also described, and also represents the first occurrence outside the Laurentian Burgess Shale-type faunas. This fauna indicates that deeper-water hexactinellids from the Burgess Shale-type faunas survived in places into at least the Early Ordovician, in addition to the Cambrian-type protomonaxonid assemblage seen in the Fezouata Biota.

Copyright © 2014 J.P. Botting and L.A. Muir. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Joseph P. Botting and Lucy A. Muir "First Post-Cambrian Records of the Reticulosan Sponges Valospongia and Hintzespongia from the Late Tremadocian of North Wales," Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 59(1), 241-252, (24 September 2012). https://doi.org/10.4202/app.2012.0016
Received: 6 February 2012; Accepted: 10 September 2012; Published: 24 September 2012
KEYWORDS
Cambrian
exceptional preservation
Gwynedd
Migneintian
North Wales
Porifera
Reticulosa
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