Rostroconchs in Leiden
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Rostroconchs in Leiden Stephen K. Donovan1 • P. A. Madern1,2
Received: 6 March 2016 / Accepted: 6 April 2016 Ó Akademie der Naturwissenschaften Schweiz (SCNAT) 2016
Abstract For a land with a dearth of natural rock outcrops, the Netherlands abounds with urban ‘exposures’ of fossiliferous rocks such as building stones, street furniture and street art. In the Rapenburg in Leiden, sections through distinctive shells in Mississippian (Lower Carboniferous) limestones are identified as rostroconch molluscs (Order Conocardioidea). The generic identification is tentative, but the specimens may belong to the genus Filicardia Rogalla and Amler, perhaps the common Filicardia inflata (M’Coy). The only other mollusc taxon that has been identified from these rocks is the gastropod Straparollus? sp. Keywords Mollusca Conocardioidea Mississippian Filicardia Building stones Urban geology
Introduction The Netherlands is not an exciting country for the geologist to visit, lacking as it does natural rock exposures except in the south-east and east. Nevertheless, rocks are a locally common feature of the Dutch environment, having been imported Editorial handling: D. Marty. & Stephen K. Donovan [email protected] P. A. Madern [email protected] 1
Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Darwinweg 2, 2333 CR Leiden, The Netherlands
2
Institut Catala` de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont, Universitat Auto`boma de Barcelona, Edifici ICTA-ICP, carrer de les Columnes s/n, Campus de la UAB, 08193 Cerdanyola del Valle`, Barcelona, Spain
for use as building stones, street furniture and street art, and studies of the urban geology can be instructive (see, for example, Donovan 2015a, b). Upper Palaeozoic limestones are locally common and fossiliferous in the streets of Dutch cities such as Amsterdam (van Roekel 2007), Leiden (Donovan 2016) and Maastricht (Donovan et al. 2016, in press). The identifiable enclosed fossils are of limited diversity, mainly articulated brachiopods, rugose and tabulate corals, and crinoid ossicles, apart from some rarities. The examples described herein are among these rarities and have puzzled S. K. D. for many years. On numerous occasions he has led groups of life science B.Sc. and M.Sc. students from the University of Leiden through the street in central Leiden known as the Rapenburg in pursuit of Mississippian invertebrates. Until now, he has professed to be uncertain of the affinity of the sections through shells and discussed herein. That they have now been identified to even class level is due to serendipity, when Karen Robinson brought to S. K. D.’s notice a print of Mississippian fossils on sale at a street market in Amsterdam. The image of a Mississippian conocardioid rostroconch on this print brought instantaneous recognition of the unknown fossils of the Rapenburg. The rostroconchs (earliest Cambrian to latest Permian) are an extinct group of benthic, univalve molluscs that were not recognized to be distinct from the bivalve molluscs, with which they share a superficially similar gross m
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