First report of Crumillospongia (Demospongea) from the Cambrian of Europe (Murero biota, Spain)

Abstract

The demosponge genus <i>Crumillospongia</i>, originally described from the Burgess Shale (middle Cambrian of Canada), has only been cited from lower and middle Cambrian localities of North America and China. The taxon is now also described from uppermost lower Cambrian rocks of the Murero Lagerstätte (Zaragoza Province, NE Spain). <i>Crumillospongia mureroensis </i>sp. nov. is a small to medium sized sack-shaped to elongate demosponge characterized by the presence of densely packed pores of three sizes, considerably larger than those in any other species of the genus. The Spanish material represents a link in the chronostratigraphical gap between the Chinese and North American material

Relationships of the Cambrian Protomonaxonida (Porifera)

“…The only widely distributed genus is Crumillospongia, reported from the middle Cambrian Murero Shale of Spain (García-Bellido et al, 2011) and the early Cambrian Niutitang Formation, Chengjiang Biota and Guanshan Biota of South China (Yang and Zhao, 2000;Dornbos et al, 2005;Wang et al, 2005;Hu et al, 2010). Due to the low preservation potential of the minute spicules, many of these specimens have been recognised only on the basis of the supposedly distinctive pore arrangement.…”

An outline of the distribution and diversity of Porifera in the Ordovician Builth Inlier (Wales, UK)

“…Cambrian deep-water sponge faunas were dominated by reticulosans (e.g., Steiner et al, 1993;Wu et al, 2005;Xiao et al, 2005), with shallower-water assemblages dominated by protomonaxonids (Rigby and Hou, 1995;García-Bellido Capdevila, 2003;Rigby and Collins, 2004;Ivantsov et al, 2005) and, locally, some demosponges (Rigby and Collins, 2004;García-Bellido et al, 2011;Botting et al, in press). There is a historical bias towards these latter communities, because the Burgess Shale was preserved at the base of a carbonate escarpment, and most other exceptionally preserved faunas from Laurentia (Rigby, 1983;Johnston et al, 2007;Rigby et al, 2010;Botting et al, in press) are from broadly similar water depths.…”

Large euarthropod carapaces from a high latitude Cambrian (Drumian) deposit in Spain

“…However within the Cambrian, most deposits preserving non-biomineralized tissues can be found between 30°N and 30°S [1,[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15], on the palaeocontinent Laurentia, on the South China or North China blocks, or close to the Equator on palaeocontinent Gondwana (figure 1). Higher latitude sites of Cambrian age are rarer, known from Baltica and Gondwana [18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. The limited geographical distribution of deposits preserving nonbiomineralized tissues is even more apparent in the Drumian, with deposits from higher latitudes only reported from Gondwana, specifically Czech Republic [18,24] (Buchava and Jince Formations) and Spain (Murero Formation within the Badules Unit, see §1.1).…”