Looking for current information for fossils that aren't in all of my available references

[Mediospirifer]

I'm putting together a bunch of entries for Collections, and I keep running across fossils for which I can't find some important pieces of data--like "Author Citation"!

 

For example, I have one example of a tiny brachiopod listed as Cyrtina recta in my Linsley¹ fossil guide. It doesn't appear at all in my Wilson² guide, nor is it listed in Fossilworks. I did find it in Hall's Palaeontology of New York v.  4³ as Cyrtina hamiltonensis var. recta. The plates used by Linsley are taken from Hall. Here's a set of photos of my specimen:

 

Pedicle valve. 9mm x 5mm:

 

Hinge side of pedicle valve:

 

Brachial valve. 9mm x 5mm:

 

Side view (Hinge at left):

 

Now, Cyrtina hamiltonensis is listed in Fossilworks, as well as the Wilson guide, but that is a distinctly different shape. 

 

On this specimen, I'm looking for the correct Author Citation (Hall 1867?) and the current nomenclature.

 

Example #2: Acrospirifer duodenaris, according to Linsley. Not listed in Wilson, Hall, or Fossilworks. Acrospirifer murchisoni appears in Fossilworks, but that's Lower Devonian according to Linsley (and isn't listed in Wilson or Hall, either). Here's some photos (9mm (if it weren't missing a tip) x 5mm):

 

Pedicle, brachial:

 

Again, I need an Author Citation and current nomenclature.

 

Thanks for any help with this. I have more!

 

1. Linsley, D. M. Devonian Paleontology of New York. (1994) Paleontological Research Institution Special Publication 21.

2. Wilson, K. A. Field Guide to the Devonian Fossils of New York. (2014) Paleontological Research Institution Special Publication 44.

3. Hall, J. Palaeontology of New York v.  4. (1867)

 

[oilshale]

Try this for Cyrtina: https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/48375/ID219.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y

Encyclopedia of Life can be also helpful: http://www.eol.org/pages/4944691/overview

I couldn't find Acrospirifer duodenaris in "Index to Organism Names (ION)" http://www.organismnames.com/query.htm

Thomas

[Mediospirifer]

Thanks, Thomas.

 

Unfortunately, the brachs shown in the first paper look like "regular" Cyrtina hamiltonensis, not this specimen. I will have to look at my specimen of C. hamiltonensis under the microscope for the fine structures the author points out to designate a new species....

 

The Encyclopedia of Life also doesn't have any info on C. hamiltonensis--just a page to placehold! "No one has contributed a brief summary to this page yet." The photo set are from a different fossil, too; looks like Athyris spiriferoides to me (or something very similar).

 

Both EoL and ION look like useful sites, and may help with some of my other "incomplete data" specimens. Just not these two.

 

I tried a quick Google Scholar search (something I should have done before posting this thread!) on Cyrtina recta, and found the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History website. They have 25 specimens listed, with a few photographed.  Specimen name: Cyrtina hamiltonensis recta Hall 1867. So, one down.

 

I'm still looking for the Acrospirifer. I've found some mentions of it, as Acrospirifer duodenarius Hall, but I still need (or at least want) the citation year. I'll keep looking. At least now I know there's a misspelling in Linsley!

 

Thanks for the suggestions, and the paper!

 

[abyssunder]

Aha, there are name variants: A. duodenaris, A. duodenarius, A. duodenaria. Maybe you are searching for Acrospirifer duodenaria (Hall).

 

 

reference

 

 

[Mediospirifer]

Thanks, Abyssunder, I did run across that one. I do plan to note alternate spellings in the "Additional Information" when I post it.

 

I have found the full info, in a SUNY Geneseo program posting: Acrospirifer duodenarius Hall 1843. Of course, this publication suggests that maybe the North American species currently assigned to Acrospirifer should be assigned elsewhere... Here's a link to that: LINK.

 

Here's a question regarding another fossil. Plumalina brevis was described in 2013, in this paper. Should the citation for that be "Muscente and Allmon 2013"?

 

[piranha]

text from:

 

The Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology (2007)

Part H Brachiopoda (Revised Vol. 6 Supplement) pp. 2321-3226

 

Family Acrospiriferidae

Medium to large size, transverse, generally capillate with fila, occasionally with a tendency to develop marginal spines; crural plates variably present. [Jansen (2001a) illustrated spines on some well-preserved specimens attributed to Acrospirifer primaevus from the regio typica (but not from the type locality).  We cannot be sure that these specimens are conspecific with the type specimens of the genus Acrospirifer, which when illustrated by Jahnke (1971) show no spines.  If we retain the possibility of a spinose Acrospirifer, the genus may become restricted to its type species only.  The genus Filispirifer erected by Jansen (2001b) in order to gather most of the capillate species previously assigned to Acrospirifer also shows a slight tendency to develop rudimentary marginal spines, indicating that the two genera are very closely related.]  Lower Devonian (upper Lochkovian)–Middle Devonian (Eifelian).

 

 

text from:

 

Jansen, U. (2001a) 

On the genus Acrospirifer Helmbrecht et Wedekind, 1923 (Brachiopoda, Lower Devonian) (Contributions to Lower Devonian

(Contributions to Lower Devonian brachiopods from the Rheinisches Schiefergebirge and adjacent areas, 1)

Journal of the Czech Geological Society, 46(3-4):131-144   PDF LINK

 

According to the present knowledge, the genus Acrospirifer should be restricted to its type species A. primaevus that probably occurs exclusively in the Ardenno-Rhenish region and possibly in southern England and the Czech Republic.  Previous assignments of other species to this genus are regarded as doubtful and should be carefully reconsidered.  Reports of Acrospirifer outside the Ardenno-Rhenish Mountains are doubted.

[Mediospirifer]

Thanks, piranha!

 

Looking at the PDF you linked, I find that Acrospirifer murchisoni and other N. American species assigned to Acrospirifer have been reassigned to Patrispirifer. Googling on Patriaspirifer duodenarius, I found several articles (in Portuguese) discussing Brazilian fauna of Middle Devonian age, including Patriaspirifer duodenarius Hall 1843. So, that looks like the current nomenclature.  

 

[erose]

I LOVE this s**t! Great job everyone. I'm impressed.  Now can you all help me sort out the entire Cincinnatian nomenclature? I whittled the original list of 1,400+ species down to near 800 but it still needs work….

[FossilDAWG]

If you want to be precise, I think it should be Patriaspirifer duodenarius (Hall 1843).  When the genus name is changed from the original designation, the author's name is put into brackets.

 

Don

[doushantuo]

Renaud 's 1942 thesis on the Armorican Devonian has got decent descriptions and synonymy list of acrospiriferids,BTW (but IN FRENCH)

 

to wit : of cultrijugatus,arduennensis,speciosus,primaevus,pellico,paradoxus

[Mediospirifer]

2 hours ago, erose said:

I LOVE this s**t! Great job everyone. I'm impressed.  Now can you all help me sort out the entire Cincinnatian nomenclature? I whittled the original list of 1,400+ species down to near 800 but it still needs work….

Heh. Try looking up Cincinnetina meeki in Fossilworks, and check out the list of alternative names! I'd seen mention of 3...

 

1 hour ago, FossilDAWG said:

If you want to be precise, I think it should be Patriaspirifer duodenarius (Hall 1843).  When the genus name is changed from the original designation, the author's name is put into brackets.

 

Don

Good to know! Should I put the parentheses in the "Author Citation" field, or just the title?

 

Now I'm looking up Cupularostrum prolifica. I see a number of papers for which the Google thumbnail shows "Cupularostrum [x]....Rhipidomella prolifica" or some other genus with a prolifica species. It also appears that Camarotoechia prolifica may be the same species! The Yale Peabody site photos are certainly similar, and of similar size. On with the search!

 

doushantuo, thanks for the paper.

 

[doushantuo]

boucot(acros/mooseriv)

as you can see,p 41-56 devoted to Acrospirifer

edit: 27 MB!!!

[doushantuo]

Useful for Cupularostrum?

 

 

 

[Mediospirifer]

37 minutes ago, doushantuo said:

Useful for Cupularostrum?

 

 

 

Possibly; but I need a link, not just a JPEG of the first page!

 

[Mediospirifer]

Here's a question. I've noticed that Fossilworks is missing some species, but has quite a bit of detail for the species they do list. Should I assume that where they have information, that information is acceptable to TFF Collections standards? Or should we all doublecheck everything?

 

Because if we need to doublecheck everything anyway, I have 7 more brachiopods I should research further....at the moment! That's just the first case.

 

[doushantuo]

ROFL,not.

My links tend to get removed,BTW

[doushantuo]

"C." cantabricum:

[Mediospirifer]

doushantuo,

 

It seems weird to me that your links go away. I've never had that problem. Are you linking to the image? I always link to text.

 

If you can't get links to work from text, can you post references (author, title, journal, vol, pp, year)? I can try a Google search on a reference and get the paper if it's not behind a paywall that Cornell doesn't have access to.

 

Thanks for digging things up for me!

 

[doushantuo]

Just google "Sartenaer,Cupularostrum,download"

I've got the Brice(1982,G. Surv.Canada) one(114 Mb zipped),but it's in French .Useful for Cupularostra,though

Edit :removed by the moderators,that is

That is not a judgment,Btw,but a statement intended to clarify matters

I've more or less moved on to just posting documents 

[doushantuo]

one impression I have is that Camaratoechia and Cupularostrum need sorting out

[FossilDAWG]

One "short cut" that might be helpful would be to find a recent (or the most recent) publication that deals with your species of interest.  At the top of the section of the paper on that species there should be a list of important papers that have dealt with the species, including any where the name has been changed.  This list is required as a history of the taxonomy of the species.  It can be a lot of work to put together such a list, I know our taxonomy grad students can spend a lot of time tracking down old publications.

 

I think the author name should be entered in collections so that it appears with brackets if the current generic assignment is different from where the author who described the species put it.  The brackets are a convention that alert readers to the fact that the generic assignment has changed somewhere after the original description.

 

Don

[Mediospirifer]

It looks like C. prolifica has changed name at least twice. I noticed that the Yale Peabody Museum website has several listings in their collection for Camarotoechia prolifica (Hall 1867), as I mentioned above. I happen to have a PDF of Hall's 1867 treatise (acquired from HathiTrust), so I did a search in that volume. Neither Camarotoechia nor Cupulorostrum appear in that volume, but a search for prolifica turned up Rhynchonella prolifica. The drawings look like the same species.

 

I'm going to stick with Camarotoechia for this one, and mention the two other names I've found.

 

13 hours ago, FossilDAWG said:

One "short cut" that might be helpful would be to find a recent (or the most recent) publication that deals with your species of interest.  At the top of the section of the paper on that species there should be a list of important papers that have dealt with the species, including any where the name has been changed.  This list is required as a history of the taxonomy of the species.  It can be a lot of work to put together such a list, I know our taxonomy grad students can spend a lot of time tracking down old publications.

 

I think the author name should be entered in collections so that it appears with brackets if the current generic assignment is different from where the author who described the species put it.  The brackets are a convention that alert readers to the fact that the generic assignment has changed somewhere after the original description.

 

Don

I'll look around with that in mind, but so far, for two of the three species I'm looking up it turns out that the name I know them by isn't the most recent. The most recent is what I want to find!

 

If I could find a paper tying Rhynchonella to Cupulorostrum, or Cupulorostrum to Camarotoechia, I'd be happier. The AMNH website shows both Camarotoechia and Rhynchonella (with Rhynchonella marked as "Preferred") in their paleontology database, but doesn't give any results for Cupulorostrum! And neither specimen has any photos posted.