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Bryozoa
Verminaria oblonga (Busk, 1859)
Nomenclature
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Family: MembraniporidaeGenus: Verminaria
- lectotype: B.M.(N.H.) Palaeont. Dept. D6927
SUMMARY
Colonies are multiserial and encrusting, often forming extensive sheets occasionally with local multilamellar growth. The ancestrula is twinned, comprising two mirror-image zooids oriented at about 90° to one another, each with a high, hemielliptical opesia and a proximal frontal wall (?gymnocyst) slightly larger than the opesia in area. The first budded zooid is located in the angle between the ancestrular zooids, later zooids appearing in successively more lateral and proximal positions to encircle the twinned ancestrula.
Autozooids are small, about 0.32-0.42 mm long by 0.20 mm wide, typically rectangular in outline shape but sometimes elongate rhomboidal. The frontal wall is an extensive, depressed, granular cryptocyst containing 2-4 pairs of opesiules in the distal two-thirds. The opesia is hemielliptical, the proximal edge straight or very slightly concave, wider than long, about 0.06-0.07 mm long by 0.11-0.12 mm wide. Prominent, rounded nodes occur at the two distolateral corners of each autozooid. Ovicells are unknown.
Avicularia are lacking.