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Late Ordovician (Katian) brachiopods from the Southern Uplands of Scotland: biogeographic patterns on the edge of Laurentia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2009

Yves Candela
Affiliation:
National Museums Collection Centre, 242 West Granton Road, Edinburgh EH5 1JA, UK Email: [email protected]
David A. T. Harper
Affiliation:
Natural History Museum of Denmark (Geological Museum), University of Copenhagen, Øster Voldgade 5–7, DK-1350 København, Denmark Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Some 40 brachiopod species are known from the localities of Kilbucho and Wallace’s Cast in the Kirkcolm Formation in the Northern Belt of the Southern Uplands of Scotland. The fauna is diverse despite the relatively small numbers of brachiopod specimens (c. 180) available for study. Much of the fauna was transported downslope and is locally preserved in obtrution deposits. It represents a broad census of outer shelf and upper slope palaeocommunities around this part of the Laurentian margin during the early Katian, and is dominated by relatively small plectambonitoid brachiopods. When compared with other circum-Iapetus assemblages, the brachiopods from the Southern Uplands compare most closely with those from the Bardahessiagh Formation, Pomeroy, Northern Ireland, rather than with adjacent, well-known faunas from the Girvan district, SW Scotland. These new data suggest that this part of the Southern Uplands was located in closer proximity to Pomeroy than Girvan, and located in deep-water environments similar to those in the upper parts of the Bardahessiagh Formation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 2010

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