Review of some species of Favistina, Nyctopora, and Calapoecia (Ordovician corals from North America)

Abstract

SummaryMaterial from the H. A. Nicholson collection, University of Aberdeen, provides information on three of Nicholson's species. Syntypes of Favistina calicina are described and the lectotype designated. Topotypes of Nyctopora billingsii are compared with an earlier description of the type thin sections. Columnopora cribriformis is considered synonymous with Calapoecia huronensis Billings, itself a poorly understood species; redescription of the type of the latter species shows it to be separate from C. canadensis Billings. Calapoecia ungava Cox is reinterpreted with a lectotype designated, and Nicholson material is placed with this species. All specimens are from eastern North America and of Upper Ordovician age excluding the Middle Ordovician N. billingsii and C. canadensis.

Growth characteristics of Protoheliolites norvegicus (Tabulata; Upper Ordovician; Estonia)

“…Although it seems that some species of Nyctopora are similar to P. norvegicus in morphology (Bassler ), there may be a difference in the mode of corallite increase. Jull () mentioned that increase in N. billingsii appears to be lateral, whereas Hill () pointed out that increase in Nyctopora is peripheral or intermural. Verification of the mode of corallite increase in Nyctopora through detailed analysis is necessary to resolve this uncertainty, but in any case, the modes of increase that have been reported in Nyctopora differ fundamentally from coenenchymal increase in P. norvegicus .…”

A New Endosymbiont in Late Ordovician Tabulate Corals from Anticosti Island, Eastern Canada

“…While other embedment structures have been named from sarcinulid hosts (e.g., Phragmosalpinx in Columnopora, Plusquellec, 1968a), Chaetosalpinx tubes have been discussed only informally as unnamed foreign cavities commonly found in sarcinulid corallite walls and septa (e.g., Foerste, 1916;Flower, 1961;Jull, 1976). Chaetosalpinx ferganensis described here in Calapoecia and Columnopora from Anticosti formally extends the range of these embedment structures to the Rawtheyan and Hirnantian stages (Ashgill, Late Ordovician), though they were also identified in Columnopora from Ashgillian strata (Richmondian) on Manitoulin Island (Horst, 1978).…”

Ordovician (Bendigonian, Darriwilian to Gisbornian) faunas from the northern Molong Volcanic Belt of central New South Wales

“…Hill's (1981) revised diagnosis of the Subfamily Billingsariinae referred only to "discontinuous monacanthate axial structure". The separation of Nyctopora from Billingsaria seems to be based mainly on the revision of the type species of Nyctopora, N. billingsii Nicholson, 1879by Hill (1961 and Jull (1976), and owed most to the perception that supposed mural pores and vertically arranged septal trabeculae allied it to Calapoecia. Hill ( 1981), however, grouped this latter genus in a different subfamily of syringophyllids.…”