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Note on the Occurrence of Blastoids with Brachioles at Hook Head, Co. Wexford, Ireland
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2009
Extract
Among interesting finds at Hook Head are several specimens of a species of Blastoid with the brachioles in position. A few also have part of the column attached. The species has not yet been worked out, but it probably belongs to the genus Orophocrinus. The calices are mostly crushed and for that reason may be difficult to identify, but so far as a somewhat cursory examination has shown they belong to a species similar to O. pentangularis Miller. Blastoids in this condition do not seem to have been recorded from European rocks before. In the Catalogue of the Blastoidea in the Geological Department of the British Museum, published in 1886, Etheridge and Carpenter state on p. 63 that no traces of brachioles have been discovered in any European Blastoid. I do not know of any record since. They are rarely found in this state of preservation even in America, so it seems worth while placing the specimens on record now. Dr. L. B. Smyth records Orophocrinus pentangularis Miller from the Upper Michelinia antiqua Beds at Hook Head, also a Blastoid from the Upper Michelinia favosa Beds, but he informs me he has never seen any of these organisms in the above state of preservation before. Our specimens occurred on a thin shaly layer on top of a limestone in the Supra-dolomite Beds at Doornoge Bay. Like ours, the specimens recorded by Dr. Smyth also have calices which are mainly flattened, so I was interested to find in the Austin Collection in the Liverpool Museum several specimens which are fairly round and solid. Over thirty specimens are labelled from Hook Head. This corresponds with the names in the MS. catalogue which are given as Pentremites pentangularis, P. acutus, P. oblongus, and P. enniskilleni. The last named is also given in the catalogue from Co. Fermanagh.
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