Hiscocapsa O’Dogherty, 1994

Dumitrica, Paulian, Dieni, Iginio & Massari, Francesco, 2022, Valanginian Radiolarians Of Ne Sardinia (Italy) In The Frame Of The Weissert Event, Acta Palaeontologica Romaniae 18 (2), pp. 97-159 : 125

Genus Hiscocapsa O’Dogherty, 1994

Type species. Cyrtocapsa grutterinki Tan Sin Hok, 1927 Diagnosis. Usually spindle shaped Upper Jurassic? to Lower Cretaceous Nassellaria consisting of 4 chambers, the last one thinner-walled and sometimes missing due to fossilization or dissolution after the death of specimens.

Remarks. In the original diagnosis, this genus was invalid because O’Dogherty had included in it Gongylothorax verbeeki (Tan, 1927) , the type species of the genus Gongylothorax Foreman, 1968 . Although O’Dogherty considered that the upper Maestrichtian species illustrated and described by Foreman under this name was not the same as the one described and illustrated by Tan Sin Hok, both specimens are dicyrtids and congeneric and the type species of the genus Gongylothorax remains the species illustrated by Tan Sin Hok. Besides this species, that is a dicyrtid, and the type species of the genus Hiscocapsa , that is a tetracyrtid, O’Dogherty included in Hiscocapsa , among other species, the species Theocapsa uterculus Parona, 1890 , and Cyrtocapsa asseni Tan, 1927 , both belonging to another genus and family by having, as proved below, two chambered cephalis. Later O’Dogherty et al., (2017, p. 41), emended this genus, that will be restreined to tetracyrtid nassellarians having a globose postabdominal segment with tubercles. According to them, the species without tubercles belong to another genus. In the present paper we do not consider the morphology of the postabdominal segment (tuberculate or nontuberculate) as having a generic value because there are species whose tubercles are so weakly marked that they seem to be intermediary between the two morphologies ( Hiscocapsa lagunculoides n. sp. and H. tuberculata n. sp.).

Range. Middle Jurassic to early Cretaceous.