Escharella variolosa (Johnston, 1838)
Colonies are encrusting, multiserial and sheet-like. The ancestrula is tatiform, with an ovoidal opesia, surrounded by 9 spines in Recent examples (Hayward & Ryland 1999, p. 132), and produces a distal and two distolateral buds. Worn colony edges expose numerous small pore chambers around the perimeters of the zooids.
Autozooids are elongate, rounded-rhomboidal in outline shape, moderately large, about 0.50-0.60 mm long by 0.30-0.35 mm wide (fide Lagaaij 1952, p. 108). The frontal shield is convex, finely granular and lacks pseudopores but is bordered by approximately 16 conspicuous areolar pores separated by prominent buttresses. The primary orifice is orbicular and contains a lyrula, anvil shaped and less than half the width of the secondary orifice which measures 0.09-0.11 mm long by 0.12-0.14 mm wide (fide Lagaaij 1952). An umbo is lacking. Oral spines number two or three per zooid. The ovicell is broad, globular, imperforate and has a granulated ectooecial surface encroached around the edges by secondary calcification. Basal walls contain an ovoidal uncalcified window.
Avicularia are absent.
This species, originally described from the Recent, is distinguished from E. reussiana which lacks oral spines and has smaller areolae not separated by buttresses.
Pliocene, Late Zanclean–Early Piacenzian, Coralline Crag Formation, Suffolk, UK.
Also recorded by Lagaaij (1952) from the Neogene of the Low Countries, France and Austria (Lagaaij 1952, p. 108; Bishop 1987, p. 18). According to Hayward & Ryland (1999), E. variolosa is widely distributed at the present-day in the north-east Atlantic and western Mediterranean.