Aulocopella
Taxonomy
This page represents the following TreeOfLife-200M taxonomic path.[1]
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Porifera
- Class: Anthaspidellidae
- Order: Aulocopella
Visual Description
Images associated with this taxon in the compiled dataset are museum specimen photographs (mostly labeled from GBIF records as fossil specimens). The visual material for Aulocopella appears as silicified/stone-preserved sponge fragments or impressions, consistent with the treatment of Aulocopella within erratic Ordovician sponge faunas transported into much later (Miocene–Early Pleistocene) fluvial deposits.
Taxonomic status and naming
- Aulocopella* is treated as an accepted genus (authorship: Rauff, 1895) in GBIF’s taxonomic backbone. [2]
Occurrence in regional “erratic sponge” deposits
In the Neogene to Early Pleistocene fluvial deposits of the Netherlands and northern Germany, silicified Late Ordovician “erratic” sponges were transported from their Baltica source areas. Aulocopella occurs among the anthaspidellid component of these sponge assemblages. [3]
Provenance implications
Because these erratic sponge occurrences are essentially restricted to the Estonia–St Petersburg area for the relevant Ordovician sponge faunas, anthaspidellid taxa such as Aulocopella can function as provenance “key groups” when comparing assemblages from different depositional windows and regions. [3]
Taxa-level composition in the studied material
In collections from source regions (Estonia and the St Petersburg area), anthaspidellids constitute a substantial fraction of sponge specimens, and Aulocopella includes species such as A. cepa and A. dactylos; A. hemisphaericum is noted as probable in that context. [3]
Gallery
References
- ↑ Dataset view for Animalia / Porifera / Anthaspidellidae / Aulocopella constructed from imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M records under this taxonomic path. Hugging Face Datasets. https://huggingface.co/datasets/imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M.
- ↑ Aulocopella Rauff, 1895. GBIF. https://www.gbif.org/species/4581992. Accessed 2026-07-09.
- 1 2 3 Freek Rhebergen. Ordovician sponges (Porifera) and other silicifications from Baltica in Neogene and Pleistocene fluvial deposits of the Netherlands and northern Germany; pp. 24–37. Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences Geology. 2009. https://doi.org/10.3176/earth.2009.1.03.