Spinocyrtina? From Morocco

[Shamalama]

A recent purchase from a dealer in Morocco procured these brachiopod fossils for my collection. They come from Mt. Oufaten near Alnif, Morocco and are Devonian (Emsian stage) in age. I can find papers about the Trilobites from this area but nothing regarding the Brachiopod fauna. Am I correct with my ID and does anyone have any papers they would suggest that could describe more of the Devonian fauna from Morocco?

Thanks

Dave

Specimen #1

Specimen #2

[piranha]

How about a possible Cyrtospirifer species? I found a reference to these in Morocco and then found this recent paper on Cyrtospirifer just south of Morocco:

 

PDF LINK

 

Schemm-Gregory, M. (2011)

A new species of Cyrtospirifer (Brachiopoda) from the middle Devonian of the western Sahara (northwestern Africa).

Rivista Italiana di Paleontologia e Stratigrafia, 117(1):3-13

 

 

 

[caldigger]

They're a couple of beauts, whatever they turn out to be.

[Shamalama]

Thanks for the paper, Scott. I read through it and while superficially it may seem to fit into Cyrtospirifer, The locations and strata that are described in the paper you linked seem to be quite different from where these fossils came from. I did some more digging based on the references included in the paper you linked and came upon this:

Annales Societatis Geologorum Poloniae (2013), vol. 83: 243–307.
MIDDLE DEVONIAN BRACHIOPODS FROM THE SOUTHERN MAIDER (EASTERN ANTI-ATLAS, MOROCCO)

Within the paper is a species called Spinocyrtia cf. elburzensis (Brice, 1973) that seems to fit my specimens better and it comes from an area much closer to the source of my fossils.

Dave

[piranha]

As I mentioned above, Cyrtospirifer is also recorded in the late Devonian of Morocco. I linked the other paper because it has figures of Cyrtospirifer for comparison with your specimen. It doesn't line up perfectly with the Emsian, but at a minimum the genus is present in Morocco and might be useful for further research.

 

Here's the paper that lists it in Morocco:

 

PDF LINK

 

Kaiser, S., Becker, R.T., Brice, D., Nicollin, J.P., Legrand-Blain, M., Aboussalam, Z.S., Hassani, A.E., & Nübel, H. (2004)

Sedimentary succession and neritic faunas around the Devonian-Carboniferous boundary at Kheneg Lakahal south of Assa (Dra Valley, SW Morocco).

Devonian of the western Anti Atlas : correlations and events - Documents de l'Institut Scientifique, Rabat, 19:69-74

 

The other paper you requested is a short abstract from the 2005 5th International Brachiopod Congress in Copenhagen:

 

Schemm-Gregory, M., & Jansen, U.

Middle and Upper Devonian Brachiopods from the Western Sahara (Morocco)

Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, Senckenberganlage 25, D-60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany

 

Devonian reefs near Smara at the SE flank of the Tindouf Synclinorium (Western Sahara, Morocco) are studied in a cooperation programme of the Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg and Moroccan institutions. The investigated brachiopods come from sedimentary successions close to the reefs and from the reefs themselves and indicate a late Givetian to Frasnian age.

 

The majority of the taxa shows close affinities to European forms from France, Spain and the Eifel region of Germany, e. g., Dagnachonetes cf. supragibbosus (Sobolev, 1909), Douvillina dutertrei (Murchison, 1840), Devonaria sp., minuta? (Buch, 1837), Xystostrophia cf. umbraculum (von Schlotheim, 1820), and “Kransia parallelepipeda” (Bronn, 1837).Certain taxa from the Western Sahara, such as Cyrtina cf. hamiltonensis (Hall, 1857), Devonochonetes cf. scitulites (Cooper, 1945) and Rhipidomella cf. vanuxemi (Hall, 1857), are similar to forms from eastern North America, especially from the Middle Devonian Hamilton Group. Very interesting is the occurrence of representatives of the enigmatic genus Paracrothyris Wu, 1974 that has hitherto only been known from Nevada and South China. Nalivkinaria issoumourensis (Drot, 1971) and Tropidoleptus carinatus freuloni Boucot, Massa & Perry, 1983 have been described from other localities in Morocco, Algeria and Libya. Finally, a new species of Schizophoria is identified.

 

We thank the Paul Ungerer Foundation for the financial support which made the first expedition possible.

 

 

[piranha]

I just looked through the paper you found and Spinocyrtia is an excellent match! It's listed as occurring in the Drotops level which is the middle Eifelian of Maïder-SE Morocco, and much closer to Emsian than late Devonian. Luckily I managed to track down the first paper describing Spinocyrtia elburzensis from Iran. The paper is in French but can be copy-pasted to google translate.

 

Brice, D., Lafuste, J., De Lapparent, A.F., Pillet, J., & Yassini, I. (1973)

Étude de deux gisements paléozoiques (Silurien et Dévonien) de l’Elbourz oriental (Iran).

Annales de la Société Géologique du Nord, 93:177-218  PDF LINK

[Shamalama]

Thanks Scott. As I read the Cyrtospirifer paper more I noticed how it compared when the genus was found in different parts of the world (such as Nevada and China) at different stratigraphic levels. If I understand what I read, Cyrtospirifer does start to appear in the late Middle Devonian (possibly in Morocco). In PA and NY it starts to appear in the Fransian and so was likely a migrant. Although the author does point out that the genus Cyrtospirifer has been a dumping ground for many distinct species:

Taxa attributed to the genus Cyrtospirifer Nalivkin in Fredericks, 1924 have been studied since the 19th century (e.g, Murchison 1840; Quenstedt 1871; Gosselet 1894) and re used as important index fossils for the Upper Devonian due to their distinctive morphology and global pan-tropical distribution. As a result, almost every Upper Devonian spiriferid with fine medial plications historically has been assigned to Cyrtospirifer. However, the oldest species of Cyrtospirifer first evolved by the mid-to-late Givetian (upper Middle Devonian) (e.g., Paeckelmann 1942; Brice et al. 1976, 1979; Brice 1982, 1988, 2003). In recent studies focused on revisions to key cyrtospiriferids Ma & Day (1999, 2000, 2003, 2007) and Ma et al. (2003) revised Cyrtospirifer. In their 2003 revision of Cyrtospirifer they highlighted the fact that historically Cyrtospirifer has been used as a taxonomic garbage can for Upper Devonian Cyrtospirifer-like taxa resulting in assignmentof what have been demonstrated to be distinct genera and species (see examples cited by Gratsianova et al. 1989; Ma & Day 2003). Ma & Day (2003:270) proposed an evolutionary tree for the early cyrtospiriferids of the Givetian and Frasnian. However, the oldest species shown in their tree is probably younger than the new species from North Africa described in this work, according to brachiopod data (Schemm-Gregory & Jansen 2005). The primitive morphologic characters of C. tindoufensis, such as coarse and few plications, help to fill in the record on the earliest-oldest known genuine species of Cyrtospirifer in the Tenticospirifer-Cyrtospirifer evolutionary lineage proposed by Ma & Day (2000).

As I was searching for info on Spinocyrtina I noticed a few papers on the Dra valley in Western Sahara. It sounds as though they have a similar reef system in that area as they do at Hamar Lagdad, only later in the Devonian.

[GerryK]

If you had not stated that the specimens are from Morocco, I would have said you have a Spinocyrtia granulosa from New York. I don't know the differences between Spinocyrtia granulosa and Spinocyrtia elburzensis. Your specimens and Spinocyrtia granulosa look like same species to me. Spinocyrtia granulosa is and immigrant into the Appalachian Basin from the Old World fauna and I would think Spinocyrtia granulosa would be found some where from the Old World fauna.