A Silurian sponge-inarticulate brachiopod life? association

Abstract

The association of sponges and encrusting, attached, or burrowing organisms has been commented upon relatively little. Finks (1960) and Gundrum (1979), for example, noted the association of articulate brachiopods, barnacle borings, bryozoans, gastropods, and rugose and tabulate corals with various upper Paleozoic sponges and, more specific to this paper, Morris and Whittington (1985) illustrated the inarticulate brachiopod Micromitra attached to the Cambrian sponge Pirania. During the summer of 1991, two scree-derived specimens of sponge-inarticulate brachiopod associations on two separate pieces of shale were collected from Abbott River (Figure 1), Cornwallis Island, Arctic Canada (75°14′N, 95°45′W).