Devonian branching rugose coral (or sponge)?

[Bob Clouser]

Hi all. This is my first post to the ID forum. I'm stumped on this one. It was found near Kingston, NY. Comes from Middle Devonian Hamilton Group (probably Marcellus Fm). Matrix is a brownish-gray shale. It's a mold of something with small branching (or budding) tubes, dense transverse rings, terminating in cone-shaped depressions. My first guess is some form of branching rugose (horn) coral, where each terminal cone is a corallite. But I wonder if it might also be a sponge -- though sponges usually don't preserve like this, right?

 

In the pictures below, the scale bar has divisions of 1 cm, and in the last photo there is a penny in the background for scale.

 

Thanks for any ideas...

Bob

 

 

 

[Kane]

Definitely horn coral (and a very neat branching specimen, at that)

[fifbrindacier]

Hi from France, nice coral.

[TqB]

I agree it's a coral. 

It looks like an Aulopora-type tabulate rather than a rugose one.

[Peat Burns]

Looks something like Eridophyllum  (not saying it is for sure, but similar at least and worth comparing)

 

Old paper:

 

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/48286

[Dsailor]

that is really cool. Maybe an Aulocystis tabulate coral?

[Darktooth]

Very cool specimen!

[Bob Clouser]

Thanks for the input everyone. I agree about it maybe being a tabulate coral. I looked into some of my books and it does resemble Aulocystis (age is right too). But also Heliophyllum and Eridophyllum. I recently got "The Fossil Book" by Fenton and Fenton from Amazon -- I used to dream about having this book when I saw it in libraries.

[Wrangellian]

I like it... Reminds me of a ginger root.

Impression fossils can be just as nice as body fossils. You don't normally see Paleozoic corals preserved (or not preserved) that way, right?

[Rockwood]

3 hours ago, Wrangellian said:

 

Impression fossils can be just as nice as body fossils. You don't normally see Paleozoic corals preserved (or not preserved) that way, right?

It's about all I usually find around here. Sometimes they are even preferable.

[Wrangellian]

Perhaps.. I guess that branching structure would not have held together so nicely if it had been the body fossil without matrix!

[abyssunder]

I think Aulocystis could be a pretty good match. Take a look here .

[TqB]

14 hours ago, abyssunder said:

I think Aulocystis could be a pretty good match. Take a look here .

 

I agree, larger diameter than the Aulopora I've seen.

[doushantuo]

Aulocystis is a recent dictyonid poriferan.

Aulacystis,on the other hand

edit: slightly stumped!

OK:Cladochonus?

[TqB]

1 hour ago, doushantuo said:

Aulocystis is a recent dictyonid poriferan.

Aulacystis,on the other hand

edit: slightly stumped!

OK:Cladochonus?

 

Aulocystis (Schlutter, 1885), family Aulocystidae, is an auloporid tabulate in the Treatise and a quick Google brings up a load of anthozoan references as well as the poriferan ones. Has it been reassigned recently? If so, I wonder what the coral is called now?

 

Cladochonus certainly has a similar form but the ones I've seen (Carboniferous) are quite a lot smaller although that may not matter. 

 

Without internal details it's difficult to be sure.

[abyssunder]

Maybe this document helps a little : *Dynamic Stratigraphy and Depositional Environments of the Hamilton Group (Middle Devonian) in New York State, Part I, New York State Museum Bulletin (457)

 

New York State Library

(Click here to login as a Guest\Search for *\Click  Document 457-........\Open/Print Document\ wait to load then Download.)

 

" Unlike most hexactinellid genera, Schulze's Aulocystis remained stable for 75 years, with one shift in family allocation, from Maeandrospongidae to Aulocystidae by Schulze (1904). Eventually it was recognized to be preoccupied by Aulocystis Schlutter, 1885 (fossil Anthozoa), and Zhuravleva, 1962 (in Rezvoy et al., 1962) replaced it with Neoaulocystis. Reid's proposed transfers of the genus to junior synonims of Cyclostigma Schrammen (Reid, 1967b) and Callcyclix Schrammen (Reid, 1968a) are rejected since membership in those fossil genera cannot be verified by loose spiculation. The genus presently contains three species, N. grayi (Bowerbank, 1869c), N. polae (Ijima, 1927) (as proposed by Van Soest & Stentoft, 1988:8, and accepted here), and N. zitteli (Marshall & Meyer, 1877), the latter consisting of two subspecies, N. zitteli zitteli  (Marshall & Meyer, 1877) and N. zitteli sibogae  (Ijima, 1927). Distribution of the genus is entirely tropical to subtropical, restricted to western margins of Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Ocean margins, with vertical range of 82-1383m. " - page 1381 in Systema Porifera: A Guide to the Classification of Sponges, Edited by John N.A. Hooper and Rob W.M. Van Soest © Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, 2002

 

†Aulocystis Schlüter, 1885

 Aulocystis Schulze, 1886

Edited February 22, 2017 by abyssunder

[TqB]

10 hours ago, abyssunder said:

Maybe this document helps a little : *Dynamic Stratigraphy and Depositional Environments of the Hamilton Group (Middle Devonian) in New York State, Part I, New York State Museum Bulletin (457)

 

New York State Library

(Click here to login as a Guest\Search for *\Click  Document 457-........\Open/Print Document\ wait to load then Download.)

 

" Unlike most hexactinellid genera, Schulze's Aulocystis remained stable for 75 years, with one shift in family allocation, from Maeandrospongidae to Aulocystidae by Schulze (1904). Eventually it was recognized to be preoccupied by Aulocystis Schlutter, 1885 (fossil Anthozoa), and Zhuravleva, 1962 (in Rezvoy et al., 1962) replaced it with Neoaulocystis. Reid's proposed transfers of the genus to junior synonims of Cyclostigma Schrammen (Reid, 1967b) and Callcyclix Schrammen (Reid, 1968a) are rejected since membership in those fossil genera cannot be verified by loose spiculation. The genus presently contains three species, N. grayi (Bowerbank, 1869c), N. polae (Ijima, 1927) (as proposed by Van Soest & Stentoft, 1988:8, and accepted here), and N. zitteli (Marshall & Meyer, 1877), the latter consisting of two subspecies, N. zitteli zitteli  (Marshall & Meyer, 1877) and N. zitteli sibogae  (Ijima, 1927). Distribution of the genus is entirely tropical to subtropical, restricted to western margins of Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Ocean margins, with vertical range of 82-1383m. " - page 1381 in Systema Porifera: A Guide to the Classification of Sponges, Edited by John N.A. Hooper and Rob W.M. Van Soest © Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, 2002

 

†Aulocystis Schlüter, 1885

 Aulocystis Schulze, 1886

 

Good work, abyssunder, thanks for the clarification.  

[Bob Clouser]

Thanks to everyone for their comments and input.