Exceptional new fossil of Siphonophrentis gigantea
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Evolutionary Studies, Marine Biology, Paleontology, Aquatic and Marine Chemistry
- Keywords
- paleontology, siphonophrentis, rugosa, Tetracorallia, devonian, ontario, canada, lucas formation, beachville, lafarge
- Copyright
- © 2018 McCall
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Exceptional new fossil of Siphonophrentis gigantea. PeerJ Preprints 6:e27282v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27282v1
Abstract
Fossils from the Lucas formation of South Western Ontario reveal a large specimen of the Rugosa Siphonophrentis gigantea (Lesueur, 1821), showing a considerable amount of external detail. The fossil was found outside of the quarry where it originated, the Lafarge quarry in Beachville from Devonian strata. Here, a new specimen of Siphonophrentis gigantea is described, and clues are given towards the life cycle of this species, indicating a fast rate of growth compared to extant coral species. Various specimens of Heliophyllum sp. are also used to create a dataset of growth rates, and the limestone is evaluated to find the CaCO3 content, in order to gauge the abundance of nutrients present in the habitats of these corals.
Author Comment
This is the second version of the paper. It includes an updated locality, and more research on the growth and habitat of Siphonophrentis gigantea.