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Earliest Mississippian rugose corals of eastern Australia: post-disaster fauna across the Devonian-Carboniferous Boundary?

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Abstract

The most earliest Mississippian rugose corals are post-disaster taxa occurring in a biosphere strongly modified by the crises associated with the Devonian-Carboniferous Boundary. In Western Europe, basal Tournaisian rugose corals belong to the genera Conilophyllum, Hebukophyllum and Kizilia. Conilophyllum and Hebukophyllum are either homeomorphs or close relatives of each other and are likely post-disaster fauna showing wide morphological plasticity but with an unknown origin. Kizilia is a Lazzarus taxon, known also from basal Tournaisian strata of China, that suddenly reappeared at the Devonian-Carboniferous Boundary being related to the mid-Devonian stringophyllids. The deeper basinal facies of Western Europe (Montagne Noire, Rhenish Mts, Thuringia, Upper Franconia) yield mostly small non-dissepimented solitary rugose corals, together with some dissempimented ones, amongst which are mostly long-ranging taxa. In N America, Vesiculophyllum, a genus very similar, and probably related, to Kizilia occurs together with non-dissepimented long-ranging corals. Like most of the basal Tournaisian dissepimented rugose corals, Cystodactylon orbum gen. et sp. nov. and Gudmania darumbalae gen. et sp. nov. from the basal Tournaisian of eastern Australia are interpreted as post-disaster fauna. Their origin is not understood to date and they seemingly left no descent in the Carboniferous. Their stratigraphic range is extremely limited as they so far are known only in small reefs at the base of the lower Tournaisian Gudman Formation in the type area.

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Acknowledgements

This work was made possible by the Dorothy Hill Postdoctoral Fellowship at The University of Queensland (Australia). Edouard Poty (University of Liège) is thanked for stimulating discussions on Tournaisian fauna. Thanks are also due to Kristen Spring (Queensland Museum, Brisbane) for providing catalogue numbers for the specimen described herein. The manuscript benefited from the reviews of Dieter Weyer (Berlin) and Sergio Rodríguez (Madrid).

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  1. Geology Department, Evolution and Diversity Dynamics Lab, Liège University, Quartier Agora, B18, Allée du Six-Août, 4000, Liège, Belgium

    Julien Denayer

  2. School of Earth Sciences, Integrated Palaeoenvironmental Research Group, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD, 4072, Australia

    Julien Denayer & Gregory E. Webb

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This article is a contribution to the special issue “Climate change and biodiversity patterns in the mid-Palaeozoic”

This article is registered in Zoobank under:urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:EA888C11-2496-4114-9539-056E8F7D1656; urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:60CC3C9F-A911-48C6-B418-6C130BF4E31B; urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:0FA405C9-6CEF-4A99-80EA-9FDDAE89B33A; urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:AA92E8EA-D061-4505-AC74-659FB4351164

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Denayer, J., Webb, G.E. Earliest Mississippian rugose corals of eastern Australia: post-disaster fauna across the Devonian-Carboniferous Boundary?. Palaeobio Palaeoenv 97, 655–667 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12549-016-0261-0

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