An almost complete specimen of the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) octocoral ‘Isis’ ramosa Voigt (Gorgonacea) from the Lower Saxony Basin, northwest Germany

The incertae sedis Carpathoporella Dragastan, 1995, from the Lower Cretaceous of Albania: skeletal elements (sclerites, internodes/branches, holdfasts) of colonial octocorals

“…Generally, there is a discontinuous record, and the relationship of the Palaeozoic spicules ascribed to the order Alcyonacea to Mesozoic or (Xhomo et al 2002), including own results younger Wndings, is obscure. Octocorals are well recorded from Upper Cretaceous (e.g., Voigt 1958;König 1991;Zìtt and Nekvasilová 1993;Wittler 2001a;Helm and Schülke 2003;Löser 2003) or Cenozoic (e.g., Nielsen 1913Nielsen , 1917Nielsen , 1925Langer 1989;Giammona and Stanton 1980;Kocurko and Kocurko 1992;Kocurko 1993;Weidlich 2005, 2006;Lozouet and Molodtsova 2008) sediments. The taxon Prographularia triadica from the Upper Triassic of the Northern Calcareous Alps was interpreted by Frech (1890), followed by Haas (1909) and Voigt (1958) as remains of an alcyonarian octocoral, an interpretation rejected by Jeletzky and Zapfe (1967), resulting in the lack of a conWrmed octocoral record from the Triassic.…”

“…Bayer (1955b, p. 211) already doubted the reference of some of the fossil representatives to Isis, assuming that they rather might belong to Parisis Verrill. Helm and Schülke (2003) illustrated a nice, almost completely preserved, specimen of Isis ramosa Voigt from the Campanian of northwest Germany showing a throughout rigid fanshaped corallum completely diVerent from recent Isididae with alternating calcareous internodes and horny nodes. Helm and Schülke (2003) and also Bernecker and Weidlich (2006) obviously escaped notice of the monography of Upper Cretaceous to Palaeogene corals of the former USSR provided by Kuzmicheva (1987).…”

“…Helm and Schülke (2003) illustrated a nice, almost completely preserved, specimen of Isis ramosa Voigt from the Campanian of northwest Germany showing a throughout rigid fanshaped corallum completely diVerent from recent Isididae with alternating calcareous internodes and horny nodes. Helm and Schülke (2003) and also Bernecker and Weidlich (2006) obviously escaped notice of the monography of Upper Cretaceous to Palaeogene corals of the former USSR provided by Kuzmicheva (1987). In this work, all the Upper Cretaceous-Palaeogene taxa originally described as species of Isis (including also Isis ramosa) were treated as representatives of Parisis, but Parisis is also characterized by alternating horny (nodes) and calcareous (internodes) skeletal parts (e.g., Bayer 1955b), thus, excluding the new combination concerning Isis?…”

“…There are several species assigned to Isis Linné and described from the Upper Cretaceous and Paleogene (Nielsen 1913;Voigt 1958;Helm and Schülke 2003). The two Cenomanian species Isis tenuistriata (Reuss) and Isis miranda (Pocta) have been shown to represent diVerently shaped internodes of Moltkia foveolata (Reuss) (see Lehner 1937).…”

“…Whereas all these occurrences are from the boreal realm, e.g., the Danish Basin, with typical cool-water carbonates (e.g., Weidlich 2005, 2006;Bjerager and Surlyk 2007), proved occurrences from shallow-water carbonates of the (sub-)tropical Tethyan realm are virtually lacking. Within the marly Upper Cretaceous lithologies, the occurring dissociated remains of octocorals and recovered from washing samples or extracted from the carbonates (e.g., Nielsen and Jacobsen 2004) can be well ascribed to their basal holdfasts and internodes whereas Wndings of their sclerites are comparably seldom (e.g., Alexandrowicz 1977) and Wndings of more or less complete specimens represent a real rarity (Bayer 1955a: sea-pens;Helm and Schülke 2003). The sclerites of Recent octocorals embedded in coenenchyme, the colonial tissue between the polyps and consisting of mesogloea (see Bayer et al 1983), are one of the most important features for their taxonomic classiWcation (e.g., Janes and Wah 2007).…”