Fossil Neocheilostomine Bryozoans from the Tertiary Rocks of Western Kachchh, Gujarat

Abstract

Paper describes six species of neocheilostomine bryozoans occurring in the Middle Eocene-Early Miocene rocks of Western Kachchh, Gujarat, India. Taxa belong to the families Quadricellariidae Gordon, 1984, Vinculariidae Busk, 1852 and Poricellariidae, Harmer, 1926. Of these three species are new. These are Vincularia feddeni nov sp. Poricellaria waioriensis nov sp. and Poricellaria sakurkari nov sp. Two species, Nellia tenella (Lamarck, 1816) and Vincularia kutchensis (Tewari & Srivastava, 1967) already known from this region, are further reported here. Poricellaria complicata (Reuss, 1869)? is reported for the first time and indicates oldest record from India so far. Phylogenetic analysis using PAST programme indicates that Poricellariids and Vinculariids have not evolved from the same ancestor Nellia tenella (Lamarck, 1816)

Newly discovered species of cheilostomatid Bryozoa from the Miocene of western Kachchh, Gujarat, India

“…To do so, our research group has sampled the entire Miocene sequence from Kachchh region. As a result, Sonar & Gaikwad (2013a, 2013b, 2013c and Sonar & Pawar (2016) have identified poricellariid, steginoporellid, calloporid as well as cyclostomatid bryozoans from the Cenozoic rocks exposed along the shelf zone adjoining the Mesozoic sequences of the western Kachchh (Fig. 1) (Sonar et al 2022).…”