Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 July 2015
Neotryplasma floweri n. sp. is an epizoic solitary rugose coral characterized by two orders of perforate, monacanthine, carinate septa, a complex axial structure of septal lobes and lamellae, and a well developed broad dissepimentarium. It occurs in the Late Ordovician (late Edenian to earliest Maysvillian; late Caradoc) Upham Dolomite Member of the Second Value Dolomite, Montoya Group, at El Paso, Texas, U.S.A. Neotryplasma Kaljo, 1957, also includes two Late Ordovician species from the Estonian S.S.R. and one from the late Middle and Late Ordovician of the northern and middle Ural region, U.S.S.R. This genus is assigned to the Neotryplasmatidae n. fam., which is placed in the Suborder Monacanthina Neuman, 1984.
Neotryplasma appears to be closest to Sumsarophyllum Lavrusevich, 1971a, from the Late Ordovician of the Zeravshan-Gissar region, U.S.S.R. This is noteworthy because Erina (1978) and Erina and Kim (1980) suggested that the latter may be a scleractinian coral of the Order Fungiida Verrill, 1865. The rugosan mode of septal insertion has been confirmed in Neotryplasma. N. floweri seems to bear close resemblance to a poorly known Ordovician coral, Cyathophyllum (?) kjerulfi Kiaer, 1932, from Caradoc–Ashgill strata in the Trondheim region of Norway.