Earth science collections of the Centre Grégoire Fournier (Maredsous) with comments on Middle Devonian–Carboniferous brachiopods and trilobites from southern Belgium

Abstract

Although the Centre Grégoire Fournier of the Maredsous Abbey is especially famous for the fossils and minerals from the Carboniferous (Viséan) ‘black marble’ of Denée, a marine conservation-Lagerstätte, its palaeontological collections likewise include some types and illustrated specimens of invertebrates (cystoids, goniatites, ostracods, trilobites) and fishes from the Ordovician, Devonian and Carboniferous of Belgium. These specimens are discussed and/or illustrated as is the case of the fragments of two Belgian meteorites (Lesves and Tourinnes-la-Grosse chondrites) that are part of the CGF mineralogical and petrological collections. Moreover, the type material of 30 species and subspecies of Upper Devonian–Pennsylvanian linguliformean and rhynchonelliformean brachiopods (described by de Koninck (1847), J. Fraipont (1888a), Ch. Fraipont (1908), Demanet (1923, 1934), Demanet (in Demanet & Van Straelen, 1938), and Grimm (1998)) and that of two Middle–Upper Devonian species of trilobites (Stainier, 1887; Richter & Richter, 1933), almost all from the Namur–Dinant Basin (southern Belgium), are re-investigated and/or fully figured for the first time in order to facilitate future taxonomic revision. The obscure Tournaisian genus Anomianella de Ryckholt (1851) is rejected from the bivalves and transferred to the brachiopods (Craniida). It is probably related to Petrocrania Raymond, 1911. The lectotype (hereby selected) of Orthis latissima M‘Coy, 1844 and that of Producta corrugata M‘Coy, 1844, both from the Viséan of Ireland, are photographically illustrated (for the first time for the former). The lectotype of Productus murchisonianus de Koninck, 1847 from the Upper Palaeozoic of Tasmania (Australia) is also designated.