Rare finds of the coiled cephalopod Discoceras from the Upper Ordovician of Bornholm, Denmark

Abstract

Coiled nautiloid cephalopods of the genus Discoceras are locally common in the Middle and Upper Ordovician of Baltica, for example in the Oslo Graben, but are exceedingly rare in contemporaneous strata from the Danish island of Bornholm. The two new species of Discoceras described here, D. costatum n. sp. and D. vasegaardense n. sp., occur in shales of the Upper Ordovician Lindegård Formation. The nautiloids are preserved as external molds in laminated siliciclastic mudstones. The very rare occurrence of cephalopods, combined with the apparently endemic nature of the Discoceras fauna, may be explained by the location of Bornholm distally on the Baltoscandian shelf combined with the influence of relatively cold ocean currents from the adjacent Rheic Ocean.