Abstract
WHEN the first volume of this Catalogue was published in 1928, the earliest cirriped known was Eolepas from the Rhætic. A much earlier form has since been discovered in the middle Carboniferous of the Donez and Kusnetzk Basins, U.S.S.R. This is a Lepadomorph barnacle, and it shows that the Cirripedia must already have been in existence for a long period, but gives no evidence of the origin of the group. Among many interesting points in phylogeny the author brings forward evidence to show that the three sub-orders of the sessile Cirripedes (the Brachylepadomorpha, the Verrucomorpha and the Balanomorpha) have been derived independently from a pedunculate stock. The Cirripedes show a great development in the Chalk, where nearly a hundred species and varieties are known, but there is an unaccountable imperfection of the record in the Lower Cretaceous deposits, in which only six species have been found ; this makes it difficult to connect some of the Jurassic forms with those of the Cretaceous.
British Museum (Natural History)
Catalogue of Fossil Cirripedia in the Department of Geology. Vol. 2: Cretaceous. By Thomas Henry Withers. Pp. xiv + 534 + 50 plates. (London: British Museum (Natural History), 1935.) 30s.
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British Museum (Natural History). Nature 140, 873 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/140873c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/140873c0