Verminaria oblonga (Busk, 1859)
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.
This moderately common species is most likely to be confused with Manzonella fissurata, Thalamoporella neogenica or Woodipora holostoma. However, it differs from these three species, all of which are relatively rare in the Coralline Crag, in lacking avicularia and having conspicuous nodes at the distolateral corners of the zooids.
Pliocene, Late Zanclean–Early Piacenzian, Coralline Crag Formation, Suffolk, UK. Known from the Ramsholt Member of Broom Pit, and the Aldeburgh Member of Aldeburgh Hall and Crag Pit Nursery, Aldeburgh.
Also recorded by Lagaaij (1952, pp. 41-42) from the Scaldisian of Belgium (see Bishop 1987, p. 6).