Neolagenipora infundibulata (Busk, 1859)
Colonies are encrusting, multiserial and sheet-like, with a stepped growing edge. The ancestrula is either ascophoran or tatiform (with a partial closure plate), more or less circular in outline, about 0.3 mm in diameter, with a longitudinally elliptical orifice and a convex frontal shield/closure plate ringed by about 8 spine bases.
Autozooids are elongate, rounded-rhomboidal in outline shape, about 0.60-0.70 mm long by 0.40-0.50 mm wide (fide Lagaaij 1952, p. 89). The frontal shield is convex and imperforate, except for a double row of marginal areolar pores reported by Lagaaij (1952) but which are closed by diagenetic cement in available specimens from the Coralline Crag. A thick, slightly flared peristome surrounds the orifice. The secondary orifice is hemielliptical with a straight proximal edge often containing a short median suboral denticle. It measures 0.12 mm long by 0.14-0.16 mm wide (fide Lagaiij 1952). Oral spines are lacking. The ovicell is globular, recumbent on the distal zooid, seemingly imperforate, and has a narrow opening above the distal edge of the primary orifice.
Avicularia are absent.
Available material of Neolagenipora infundibulata from the Coralline Crag has a coarsely crystalline appearance due to the growth of epitaxial crystals. Such diagenetic cement obscures the areolar pores and any pores in the ovicell, as well as making it impossible to see the condyles which are presumed to be present in the proximolateral corners of the primary orifice by analogy with Recent species of Neolagenipora (see Ryland & Hayward 1999, p. 147). Indeed, preservational problems place a question mark over the correct generic placement of N. infundibulata; for example, Bishop & Hayward (1989, p. 26) assigned the species to ‘Escharoides’ while noting its similarity to Phylactellipora.
The relatively ‘plain’ morphology of this species, which lacks avicularia and oral spines, as well as the thick peristome with its median suboral denticle, help to distinguish it from other escharellid cheilostomes found in the Crags, such as Escharella variolosa.
Pliocene, Late Zanclean–Early Piacenzian, Coralline Crag Formation, Suffolk, UK.
Also recorded from the Scaldisian of the Low Countries (Lagaaij 1952, p. 89; Bishop & Hayward 1989, p. 26).