Famennian crinoids and blastoids (Echinodermata) from Mongolia
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Famennian crinoids and blastoids (Echinodermata) from Mongolia J. A. Waters 1
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J. W. Waters 2 & P. Königshof 3
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S. K. Carmichael 1 & M. Ariuntogos 3,4
Received: 29 May 2020 / Revised: 5 August 2020 / Accepted: 10 August 2020 # Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Herein we report on the most abundant and diverse fauna of Palaeozoic crinoids and blastoids collected from Mongolia to date. The fauna is from the Late Devonian (Famennian) Samnuuruul Formation in western Mongolia. The fauna consists of two genera of blastoids and twelve genera of crinoids—four genera of camerates, three genera of flexibles, one disparid genus, and four genera of cladids. The crinoids and blastoids were living on an active island arc complex in the Central Asian Orogenic Belt (CAOB) in a high physical stress environment with frequent and often voluminous pyroclastic eruptions. The Mongolian fauna is similar to coeval faunas collected from the Hongguleleng Formation in western China and supports the hypothesis that the CAOB was a biodiversity hotspot for Famennian echinoderms and a precursor to the very successful echinoderm communities that dominated Mississippian shallow-marine ecosystems globally. Three new taxa are described. Mongoliacrinus minjini, new genus and species, is the oldest member of the Acrocrinidae, previously known from the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian and the first occurrence of the family outside North America. Eutaxocrinus ariunai and Eutaxocrinus sersmaai are new species of the flexible crinoid Eutaxocrinus, a genus with a widespread distribution during the Early and Middle Devonian, which survived into the Lower Mississippian. It is restricted to the CAOB in the Late Devonian. Keywords Central Asian Orogenic Belt (CAOB) . Crinoid . Blastoid . Devonian . Palaeobiogeography . Biodiversity hotspot
Introduction Reports of Palaeozoic echinoderm communities from Mongolia are sparse even though the country has a long and complex geologic history in the Central Asian Orogenic belt (CAOB). The earliest reports of crinoid faunas from Mongolia were all based on columnals—five Silurian species, 15 Carboniferous species, and one Permian species (Stukalina 1973, 1994, 1997; Tungalag 1998). Webster and This is a contribution to a special series on The Central Asian Orogenic Belt (CAOB) during Late Devonian: new insights from southern Mongolia. * J. A. Waters [email protected] 1
Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC 28006, USA
2
Houston, Texas, USA
3
Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Senckenberganlage 25, 60325 Frankfurt, Germany
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Mongolian University of Science and Technology, Baga toiruu, Sukhbaatar District, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Ariunchimeg (2004) reported the first discovery of cups and thecae from Mongolia, a Lower Devonian (Emsian) fauna from the Sine Jinst area of southern Mongolia. They recognized five taxa but were able to na
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