Brachiopods of the Variscan orogen

PUBLICATION — Jansen, U., Halamski, A.T. & Mottequin, B. 2025. Silurian to Lower Carboniferous Brachiopods of Central Europe—Palaeogeographic and Palaeobathymetric Constraints. In: Linneman, U. (ed.), The Variscan Orogen of Central Europe: Geodynamics – Geochronology – Geobiology, p. 827–888. Springer. ISBN 978-3-031-82911-6. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-82911-6_26.

Rycina: The authors of the chapter with particularly large Devonian and Carboniferous brachiopods: (a) Bernard Mottequin (Royal Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium) showing two Lower Carboniferous brachiopods, a spiriferide and a productide (b) Adam T. Halamski (Institute of Paleobiology, Warsaw, Poland) showing a Gigantoproductus giganteus (the largest known brachiopod – Lower Carboniferous) in an outcrop in the Pennine Mountains (c) Ulrich Jansen (Senckenberg, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) showing a Stringodiscus giganteus (Middle Devonian).

The over-thousand-page monograph on the largest mountain range in Palaeozoic Europe—the Variscan orogen—also includes a chapter on brachiopods. These are among the most common Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous fossils in this area (at least 1,500 species), providing numerous elements for palaeoecological and palaeobiogeographic reconstructions. An example of this synthetic study's conclusions is the importance of suspended matter in the water column, which has often been overlooked: brachiopod assemblages in clear (claricolous) and turbidicolous waters are fundamentally different: this is why claricolous Bohemian faunas are so different from most European assemblages that are turbidicolous.