Temperate water<i>Shamovella</i>from the Lower Permian of West Timor, Indonesia

Abstract

The problematic Mississippian-Cretaceous fossil Shamovella (=Tubiphytes) has been referred to the cyanobacteria, algae and invertebrates (sponges, hydrozoans, foraminifera). These conflicting interpretations of affinity are based on morphology. Hitherto there has been little emphasis on the palaeoecological and palaeogeographic distribution of Shamovella, although this could provide further information relating to its systematic position. Previous reports of Shamovella document occurrence in shallow-marine warm water, often reefal, associations. However, in the Late Sakmarian (Sterlitamakian) Hoeniti Member of the Maubisse Formation near Bisnain, eastern West Timor, Shamovella obscura (Maslov) Riding is locally abundant and is associated with brachiopods of temperate water affinity. Shamovella obscura occurs in grainstones with abraded and bored bioclasts, indicating shallow-water, but dasycladaleans, other calcareous algae, and also cyanobacteria are absent. This indicates that Shamovella could occupy temperate, in addition to tropical, marine environments and suggests affinities were unlikely to have been with calcified cyanobacterium or chlorophyte alga, or a consortium involving these, but is consistent with an invertebrate affinity.