Paleobiologic and evolutionary significance of corallite increase and associated features in<i>Saffordophyllum newcombae</i>(Tabulata, Late Ordovician, southern Manitoba)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Saffordophyllum newcombae Flower, 1961, displays unique abilities and an unprecedented range in types of corallite increase. Cerioid growth was characteristic, but colonies on soft substrates could grow in a tollinaform manner during early astogeny. The capacity for recovery from damage and partial mortality is amazing. Rejuvenation may have been accompanied by peripheral expansion in some cases. Rapid regeneration could involve axial increase. Circular lacunae that formed during recovery became sites of rapid lateral increase or corallite decrease. Two types of axial increase occurred within coralla. Lateral increase was concentrated mainly along the basal wall and adjacent to certain circular lacunae. In typical cerioid parts of the corallum, lateral increase seldom yielded “adult” corallites, but incipient lateral offsets could be numerous. The level of colony integration was probably moderately high. There was likely soft-tissue continuity among polyps, coordination of polyp behavior, subjugation of individuals for the good of the colony, and perhaps astogenetic control. Saffordophyllum newcombae is considered to be a tabulate coral, although one type of axial increase is similar to that in a few rugose corals and the other type of axial increase as well as possible peripheral expansion resemble modes of increase in some coralline sponges. Lateral increase is considered compatible with cnidarian rather than poriferan biology. Corallite size is typical of tabulates. Saffordophyllum may not be the direct ancestor of favositid tabulates, and may not even be closely related to them; S. newcombae is very different from Paleofavosites and Favosites . The remarkable range in forms of increase discovered in S. newcombae demonstrates the critical need for detailed paleobiologic studies, if we are to understand the early evolutionary history of corals and to establish reliable criteria for distinguishing various coral groups and homeomorphs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".