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Late Cambrian conulariids from Wisconsin and Minnesota

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2016

Nigel C. Hughes ,
Gerald O. Gunderson  and
Michael J. Weedon
Nigel C. Hughes
Affiliation:
Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521,
Gerald O. Gunderson
Affiliation:
6413 Elmwood Avenue, Middleton, Wisconsin 53562
Michael J. Weedon
Affiliation:
Dept. of Palaeontology, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD, U.K., ([email protected])
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Abstract

Several localities within the heterolithic facies of the St. Lawrence Formation (Upper Cambrian) of Wisconsin and Minnesota yield specimens with phosphatic exoskeletons, quadrate cross sections composed of four equidimensional faces each bearing a midline, and possible holdfast attachment during life. These specimens are here referred to the order Conulariida, class Scyphozoa. Their fine, tuberculate surface ornament and serially invaginated midline structure serve to define a new genus, Baccaconularia, to which two new species, B. robinsoni and B. meyeri, are assigned. Conularia cambria Walcott 1890, also from the Cambrian of the northern Mississippi Valley and long dismissed as a misidentified trilobite fragment, is illustrated photographically for the first time. This species occurs in rocks stratigraphically beneath the St. Lawrence Formation. Specimens assigned to this species by Walcott are conulariids, but lack features now considered diagnostic of either Conularia or Baccaconularia. Walcott's material is insufficient to permit detailed taxonomic evaluation, and we isolate this name to this material, pending the collection of additional, better preserved specimens. Together, Baccaconularia and Conularia cambria contain the oldest large conulariids, and these narrow a stratigraphic gap between other large conulariids known from the Lower Ordovician onwards, and smaller fossils with conulariid affinities known only from Lower Cambrian rocks.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Paleontology , Volume 74 , Issue 5 , September 2000 , pp. 828 - 838
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society

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