Abstract
The world’s earliest-known bryozoan-built reef-mounds are in mid-Lower Ordovician (upper Tremadocian) strata near Yichang, Hubei Province, central China. Their framework, a globstone, was built by abundant rounded zoaria of the trepostome Nekhorosheviella semisphaerica. That framework further baffled micrite immediately around the colonies, more broadly surrounded regionally by bioclastic calcarenites (Fenxiang Formation). Fragments of delicate branching Orbiramus normalis occur rarely in the bryohermal micrite.
Zhongde Zhu (deceased)
Nils Spjeldnaes (deceased)
Zhao-Xun Hu (deceased)
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Acknowledgments
Several individuals and organizations helped us complete this project, and we gratefully thank them all. J. Keith Rigby (Brigham Young University) originally brought Cuffey and Zhu together. Zhu’s initial field and laboratory research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 49372116). Cuffey’s visit to Jianghan Petroleum Institute (Hua Beizhuang, President; Zhou Yong-Mo, International Programs) was made possible by the China National Petroleum Corporation. While there, Liu Bingli, Jiang Yanwen, and Xiao Chuantao provided curatorial and field assistance. Pennsylvania State University’s facilities enabled Cuffey to continue processing and examining the Yichang materials. Paul Taylor (Natural History Museum), Hans Arne Nakrem (Naturhistorisk Museum), and Steven Hageman (Appalachian State University) were instrumental in locating and coordinating Spjeldnaes’ and Feng–Sheng Xia’s (Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology) manuscripts after the former’s passing. Debra Lambert and William Ammerman prepared the present manuscript, which was improved by reviews from Hans Arne Nakrem and Marcus Key.
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Cuffey, R.J., Chuantao, X., Zhu, Z., Spjeldnaes, N., Hu, ZX. (2013). The World’s Oldest-Known Bryozoan Reefs: Late Tremadocian, mid-Early Ordovician; Yichang, Central China. In: Ernst, A., Schäfer, P., Scholz, J. (eds) Bryozoan Studies 2010. Lecture Notes in Earth System Sciences, vol 143. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16411-8_2
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