Nefocoenia Oppenheim, 1930

Löser, Hannes, 2012, Revision of the family Hemiporitidae (Scleractinia, Late Cretaceous), Geodiversitas 34 (2), pp. 399-407 : 405

Genus Nefocoenia Oppenheim, 1930 .

TYPE SPECIES. — Araeacis lobata Reuss, 1854 (by subsequent designation by Wells [1936]).

REMARKS

The genus was assigned by several authors (Alloiteau 1952; Baron-Szabo 1997) to the Hemiporitidae family. Oppenheim (1930: 417) did not base the new genus on the type material of its type species but material from his own collection that he believed identical to the species established by Reuss (1854). The type material of Araeacis lobata is not available and lost according to Beauvais (1982). The material depicted by Oppenheim (1930: pl. 19, fig. 6) shows long costae with a pronounced ornamentation. This sample appears much more like a genus of the Placocoeniidae family. Beauvais (1982) assigned the material described by Oppenheim (1930) to the genus Neocoeniopsis Alloiteau, 1957 (see above).Topotypical material assigned by Felix (1903) to Araeacis lobata shows a structure different from that described by Oppenheim (1930): thick septa, in a regular hexameral symmetry with the first cycle disproportionately thicker than those of the other cycles (as in certain stylinids, rhipidogyrids and genera formerly or currently assigned to the Meandrinidae family such as Meandroria ). The septa show a dark median line with small branches resulting in spines at the lateral septal faces. The septa are made of very small trabeculae. Nefocoenia does not belong to the Hemiporitidae family.