Ecology of the recent deep-water rhynchonellid brachiopod Cryptopora from the Rockall Trough

• Published in: Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology
• Main Author: Curry, G.B.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Elsevier BV 1983
• Subjects: Gnomon; Rockall Trough; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/52472/; https://doi.org/10.1016/0031-0182(83)90006-8

The ecology of Cryptopora gnomon (Jeffreys), a small (6 mm maximum length), very thin-shelled, rhynchonellid brachiopod collected from a depth of approximately 2900 metres in the Rockall Trough, eastern North Atlantic, is described. The pedicle of this species is very variable in length, and in some specimens is much longer than the shell. Attachment, by means of a few short, distal rootlets, is invariably to small organic or inorganic substrates. In life C. gnomon is considered to have rested on the surface of a calcareous ooze in a more-or-less posterior downwards position, tethered upstream by its pedicle. Such a life style provides a realistic model for the reconstruction of the life position of some fossil brachiopods which inhabited soft substrates.