Halysites
| Halysites | ||||||||||||
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Halysites sp. |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Ordovician to Silurian | ||||||||||||
| 458 to 408 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Halysites | ||||||||||||
| Fischer von Waldheim , 1828 |
With the name Halysites , also called chain corals , the representatives of a fossil genus of corals are referred to. This genus is only detected in the lower Paleozoic in the sediments of the Ordovician and the Silurian in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and North America.
features
These are very characteristic looking corals that are easily recognizable by the tuft shape of their colonies. The individual coralites have an elongated shape with a cylindrical or oval cross-section and are separated from one another by micro-coralites. The corallites themselves are usually arranged in short rows, which then develop further like in a network. Mostly single-row chains, rarely two or three-row chains, are found.
Statigraphic and geographic distribution
This genus is found in the sediments of the Paleozoic from the Middle Ordovician (around 470 million years ago) and in the Silurian. So far there have been no finds on the continents of South America and Antarctica. These tabular corals died out at the end of the Silurian Mountains 416 million years ago.
literature
- Maria Schlick: Fossils: stone witnesses of a past life. Kaiser, Klagenfurt 2005, ISBN 3-7043-1381-5 .
Web links
- American Museum of Natural History paper (PDF; 2.38 MB)