If all goes to plan, today I leave for the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America, held this year in Seattle, Washington. To mark the occasion, this week’s fossil is from a poster Macy Conrad (’18), Paul Taylor (Natural History Museum, London) and I are presenting on Tuesday at the meeting. It comes from our delightful work in southwestern France this summer. There we explored the Type Campanian (Upper Cretaceous) and collected bucketfuls of the oyster Pycnodonte vesicularis. We’ve been studying the sclerobionts on these oysters ever since.
Above are two bore holes formed by a clionaid sponge, making the trace fossil Entobia. A group of foraminiferans has encrusted around one of the holes, making a kind of chimney. Bromley and Nordmann (1971) described a nearly identical occurrence from the Maastrichtian (Upper Cretaceous) of Denmark. It is likely the forams grew around the hole to take advantage of the sponge’s feeding currents, thus making this another example of symbiosis in the fossil record.
I know you can’t actually read this poster, one of a pair Macy and I are presenting, but at least you can see its colorful arrangement! Here’s a link to the abstract. In a later blog post you’ll see the second poster on which Macy is the senior author. My second presenting senior, Brandon Bell, will also get his moment of blog fame soon.
The Geology Department faculty hopes to have numerous posts from the GSA meeting, so more to come!
References:
Breton, G. 2017. Les sclérobiontes des huîtres du Cénomanien supérieur du Mans (Sarthe, France). Annales de Paléontologie 103: 173-183.
Bromley, R.G. and Nordmann, E. 1971. Maastrichtian adherent foraminifera encircling clionid pores. Bulletin of the Geological Society of Denmark 20: 362-368.
Coquand, H. 1858. Description physique, géologique, paléontologique et minéralogique du département de la Charente: Besançon, Dodivers, 420 p.
Platel, J.-P. 1996. Stratigraphie, seédimentologie et évolution géodynamique de la plate-forme carbonatée du Crétacé supérieur du nord du basin d’Aquitaine. Géologie de la France 4: 33-58.
Taylor, P. and Wilson, M. 2003. Palaeoecology and evolution of marine hard substrate communities. Earth-Science Reviews 62: 1-103.
Good luck in Seattle. I hope the two GSA posters receive plenty of interest.
How is the relationship with the sponge symbiotic? I see how the forams may gain an advantage but how about the sponge? Great posters Macy and Dr. Wilson..
Good question, Dr. Wiles. The meaning of symbiosis has evolved recently. It now means more often simply living together, whether mutualistic, parasitic, or neutral. The sponge here likely was losing a bit of potential food to the forams.