Living tube of a polychaete worm

Taxonomy

Bristle worm living tube

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Annelida
Class: Polychaeta Grube, 1850
Order: N/A
Family: N/A
Genus: N/A
Species: N/A

Geological Time Scale

Eon: Phanerozoic
Era: Paleozoic
Period: Devonian
Sub Period: None
Epoch: Early
International Age: Emsian (early)

Stratigraphy

Hunsrück Slate Group
Kaub Formation

Provenance

Acquired by: Purchase/Trade

Dimensions

Length: 3.5 cm

Location

Eschenbach-Bocksberg Quarry
Bundenbach
Rheinland-Pfalz
Germany

• bundenbach
• devonian
• emsian
• hunsrück slate group
• kaub formation
• living tube
• polychaete worm
• tff-oilshale-an2177

Comments

This ichnofossil consists of an accumulation of tentaculites, probably of the genus Styliolina.

Dr. M. Poschmann (General Directory of Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate in Koblenz) mentioned in a personal communication that accumulations of tentaculites / styliolites from the Hunsrück Slate are known, also in the State Collection in Mainz such pieces are found. Tentaculite accumulations can occur in quite different forms, among them those which are probably to be interpreted as coprolites due to their shape and rather irregular arrangement.
Cylindrical assemblages of tentaculites / styliolines with orientation of the shells transverse to the long axis (as in this case) are also known and have been interpreted as agglutinated housing tubes of polychaetes worms.

At the University of Bonn a diploma thesis on this topic has been done in 2010 - unfortunately no results have been published until today.

Identified by Dr. M. Poschmann.