Mecynoecia? palmata (Busk, 1859)
Colonies are erect, vincularian, with slightly flattened, subcylindrical branches, about 1-1.5 mm in diameter, bifurcating at intervals. Autozooids open all the way around the branch circumference. No median budding lamina is evident in the type material (cf. Lagaiij (1952, p. 163) who described the species as bilamellar).
Autozooids are fixed-walled and have moderately long, gently convex frontal walls containing teardrop-shaped pseudopores without spines. Maximum frontal wall width is approximately 0.20 mm. Apertures are large, longitudinally elliptical, about 0.18 mm long by 0.15 mm wide, and lack preserved peristomes.
The gonozooid is unknown.
Normally found as broken branches, this species resembles Entalophora clavata Busk, 1859, considered by Bishop (1987) to be a synonymy of Entalophoroecia deflexa (Couch, 1842). Peristomes appear to be longer in E. deflexa and the pseudopores contain small spines.
Generic assignment of Busk’s Entalophora palmata is unclear in the absence of gonozooids. Canu & Lecointre (1933) referred fertile specimens from the Miocene, which they believed to be conspecific with E. palmata, to the genus Ybselosoecia. However, branches in this French material are much broader than those from the Coralline Crag and are likely to represent a different species.
Pliocene, Late Zanclean–Early Piacenzian, Coralline Crag Formation, Suffolk, UK.
Also recorded from the ‘Scaldisian’ of the Low Countries by Lagaaij (1952).