Middle Cambrian sponges from the Drum Mountains and House Range in western Utah

Abstract

A diverse assemblage of Middle Cambrian sponges, recently collected from the Wheeler and Marjum Formations of western Millard County, Utah, includes a variety of demosponges and hexactinellids. This collection includes the verongiid Vauxia bellula Walcott, 1920, and the protomonaxonids Choia carteri and Choia ridleyi Walcott, 1920, Hamptonia bowerbanki Walcott, 1920, and Hamptonia parva n. sp. Hexactinellids in the collection include the reticulosid protospongioids Diagoniella hindei Walcott, 1920, and Diagoniella magna n. sp.; the dierespongioid hydnodictyid Valospongia? gigantus Rigby, 1973; and the hintzespongioid Hintzespongia bilamina Rigby and Gutschick, 1976. A specimen of the problematic Sentinelia? draco Walcott, 1920, is also documented as part of the collection.

New articulated protospongiid sponges from the early Cambrian Chengjiang biota

“…Protospongiids are characterized by non-fused stauractine spicules, thus they are easily disarticulated upon death and degradation. The new fossils, along with articulated protospongiids previously reported from lower and middle Cambrian Lagerstätten (Walcott, 1920;Rigby, 1978Rigby, , 1983Rigby and Collins, 2004;Xiao et al, 2005;Rigby et al, 2010), help us to better understand the evolutionary significance of protospongiids (Mehl, 1991) and the early evolution of hexactinellids and siliceans (Botting and Butterfield, 2005;Botting et al, 2012Botting et al, , 2014a.…”

An outline of the distribution and diversity of Porifera in the Ordovician Builth Inlier (Wales, UK)

“…Cambrian deep-water sponge faunas were dominated by reticulosans (e.g., Steiner et al, 1993;Wu et al, 2005;Xiao et al, 2005), with shallower-water assemblages dominated by protomonaxonids (Rigby and Hou, 1995;García-Bellido Capdevila, 2003;Rigby and Collins, 2004;Ivantsov et al, 2005) and, locally, some demosponges (Rigby and Collins, 2004;García-Bellido et al, 2011;Botting et al, in press). There is a historical bias towards these latter communities, because the Burgess Shale was preserved at the base of a carbonate escarpment, and most other exceptionally preserved faunas from Laurentia (Rigby, 1983;Johnston et al, 2007;Rigby et al, 2010;Botting et al, in press) are from broadly similar water depths. The reticulosan-dominated communities are from more recently discovered faunas, particularly in China, and are more similar to described offshore Ordovician sponge communities (Dawson and Hinde, 1889;Botting, 2004).…”

A new Cambrian arthropod, Emeraldella brutoni, from Utah

“…others (2005, 2008), and Rigby, Church, and Anderson (2010) have described additional fauna. A new emeraldellid arthropod (Emeraldellidae Raymond, 1935;Artiopoda Hou & Bergström, 1997) is here described from the upper Wheeler in the Drum Mountains.…”