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- Title
Palaeoecology Of A Late Devonian Back Reef: Canning Basin, Western Australia.
- Authors
Wood, Rachel
- Abstract
Back-reef ecologies within the celebrated mixed carbonate-siliciclastic Late Devonian (late Frasnian) Pillara Limestone of Windjana Gorge, in the Canning Basin, Western Australia, are re-interpreted as being dominated by microbial communities. Proposed microbialites are expressed as weakly-laminated, fenestral micrite, that show unsupported primary voids, peloidal textures, disseminated bioclastic debris, and traces of microfilaments. These grew as either extensive free-standing mounds or columns, often intergrown with encrusting metazoans, or thick post-mortem encrustations upon skeletal benthos. In some cases, microbial encrustations are inferred to have developed in protected cavities formed by progressive burial of the reef. The calcimicrobe<E1>Shuguria</E1>also shows a preferentially cryptic habit, encrusting either primary cavities formed by skeletal benthos, microbialite, or the ceilings of mm-sized fenestrae within microbialite. A further calcimicrobe,<E1>Rothpletzella</E1>, formed columns up to 0.3 m high in areas enriched by very coarse siliciclastic sediment. Stromatoporoid sponges with a diverse range of morphologies also formed<E1>in situ</E1>growth fabrics. Monospecific thickets of closely-aggregating dendroid stromatoporoid sponges (<E1>Stachyodes costulata</E1>), and platy-laminar forms (?<E1>Hermatostroma</E1>spp.) were common, as were remarkably large stromatoporoids (<E1>Actinostroma</E1>spp.) that grew as isolated individuals up to 5 m in diameter. Such sponges showed impressive powers of regeneration from partial mortality, and individual clones may have been capable of substantial longevities of up to 500 years.<E1>Actinostroma</E1>spp. showed highly complex growth forms including platy-multicolumnar (<E1>A. windjanicum</E1>), and a hitherto undescribed inferred whorl-forming foliaceous morphology (<E1>Actinostroma</E1>sp.) reminiscent of the modern photosymbiotic coral<E1>Acropora palmata</E1>. These complex morphologies formed abun...
- Subjects
WESTERN Australia; REEFS; ECOLOGY; STRATIGRAPHIC geology; LIMESTONE
- Publication
Palaeontology, 2000, Vol 43, Issue 4, p671
- ISSN
0031-0239
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1475-4983.00145