On Camarotoechia borealis (von Buch 1834, ex. Schlotheim 1832)

Abstract

The name of this species was proposed by Schlotheim (1832, 65, No. 88), but the history of the form really goes back to Linnaeus. The earlier writers on the Scandinavian Palaeozoic took the name Anomia plicatella Linn. (1758, 702) to cover a great number of different ribbed brachiopods, and referred in their synonymies to the form figured in fig. 5, of tab. v, of Linnaeus's Museum Tessinianum (1753), a work published some years before the adoption of binomial nomenclature. When different authors began to subdivide this group, the name plicatella came to be restricted to a species referable to the genus Spirifer, and though some authors, Wahlenberg (1821, 67) and Dalman (1828, 140, Tab. vi, fig. 2), continued to use the name plicatella in a wide sense, so as to include the species under consideration, the latter seems to have come within the range of forms described by Schlotheim (1813, 36) as Terebratulithes lacunosus. This author apparently had the intention of separating a group of ribbed Silurian brachiopods, under the name of Terebratula borealis, for in the catalogue of his collection (Schlotheim, 1832, 65, No. 88) six specimens from the “Uebergangskalkstein” of Sweden are entered under this title. The term, however, remained a nomen nudum until von Buch (1834) gave an adequate description, and it is to this author that the species should correctly be ascribed. He chose as type a specimen from the Encriniten-Übergangskalkstein of Gotland, figured in an earlier work by Schlotheim (1822, 68, Taf. xx, fig. 6a—c) as Anomia Terebrat. lacunosus.