A Revision of the Coral Genus Aulina Smith and Descriptions of New Species from Britain and China 1

Abstract
Summary The monotypic Carboniferous coral genus Aulina was founded by one of the present authors (S. S.) in 1916 ( Abs. Proc. G.S. No. 995) upon A. roliformis Smith, at that time known only from two localities, one in Northumberland and the other in Yorkshire. Since then the species has been recorded from Scotland and has been proved to be widely distributed in China. Other species have been added to the genus and several new forms are described in this paper. Here the genus is restricted to forms of these corals. The first, the plocoid group, evolved from the cerioid Lithostrotion maccoyanum , embraces Aulina rotiformis and species which closely parallel stages in its ontogeny. The second group includes phaceloid forms which have been developed more directly from diphymorphs of Lithostrotion through the production of the aulos from a column of superimposed convex axial tabulae. To this extent the genus is polyphyletic. The paper contains brief sections dealing with other derivatives of Lithostrotion and with aulate corals in general. I. Introduction This paper is a sequel to the one published in volume lxxii of the Quarterly Journal (Smith 1917) in which the Carboniferous genus Aulina and its genotype A. rotiformis were first fully described upon material from a very circumscribed area in the North of England. Aulina rotiformis has subsequently been recorded from Scotland (Hill 1937, p. 25) and has proved to be widely distributed in China (Yü 1933 [1934], p. 80, and present work). Since Aulina was founded in 1916 (Smith

This publication has 29 references indexed in Scilit: