Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: An undescribed cyclostome bryozoan from the Upper Ordovician of Oklahoma

HT_1276 585Paul Taylor and I presented a talk this month at the Larwood Symposium of the International Bryozoology Association in Thurso, Scotland. (Yes, way in the tippy-top of Scotland. Very cool.) Paul found the above wiggly bryozoan encrusting the interior of an orthid brachiopod identified as Multicostella sulcata (thanks, Alycia Stigall!) in the Lower Echinoderm Zone of the Mountain Lake Member of the Bromide Formation (Upper Ordovician, Sandbian) near Fittstown, Oklahoma. This bryozoan is “new to science”, as we grandly say. Paul generously invited me to describe it with him in this presentation and in a future paper. We did a 1994 paper together on Corynotrypa, a similar cyclostome bryozoan. The following are a few slides from our Larwood talk.

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Slide21_052815This last image showing what appear to be an interior wall with a pore is critical. Corynotrypa does not have such walls, so our bryozoan is more like a sagenellid cyclostome.

References:

Carlucci, J.R., Westrop, S.R., Brett, C.E. and Burkhalter, R. 2014. Facies architecture and sequence stratigraphy of the Ordovician Bromide Formation (Oklahoma): a new perspective on a mixed carbonate-siliciclastic ramp. Facies 60: 987-1012.

Taylor, P.D. and Wilson, M.A. 1994. Corynotrypa from the Ordovician of North America: colony growth in a primitive stenolaemate bryozoan. Journal of Paleontology 68: 241-257.

About Mark Wilson

Mark Wilson is a Professor of Geology at The College of Wooster. He specializes in invertebrate paleontology, carbonate sedimentology, and stratigraphy. He also is an expert on pseudoscience, especially creationism.
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1 Response to Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: An undescribed cyclostome bryozoan from the Upper Ordovician of Oklahoma

  1. Greg Wiles says:

    Great photos – Dr. Wilson

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