Voehringeritinae Bartzsch & Weyer, 1988

Korn, Dieter & Weyer, Dieter, 2023, The ammonoids from the Gattendorfia Limestone of Oberrödinghausen (Early Carboniferous; Rhenish Mountains, Germany), European Journal of Taxonomy 882, pp. 1-230 : 110-111

Subfamily Voehringeritinae Bartzsch & Weyer, 1988

[nom. transl. Korn (1994: 63), pro Voehringeritini Bartzsch & Weyer, 1988]

Diagnosis

Subfamily of the family Prionoceratinae with subevolute to evolute inner whorls, adult stage involute, thinly discoidal with acute venter. Suture line with divided external lobe; sutural formula (E 1 E m E 1) A L U I.

Subfamily composition

Voehringerites Manger, 1971 (1 species).

Remarks

Morphology, ontogeny

The morphology and ontogeny of the conch geometry is very similar to that of the genus Acutimitoceras ; the conch is oxyconic and the juvenile whorls have a fairly wide umbilicus. The most important distinguishing character is the divided external lobe.

Phylogeny

According to current knowledge, the subfamily, represented by only one species, is to be regarded as a direct descendant of the genus Acutimitoceras . The external lobe, which was already slightly widened in A. ucatum sp. nov., was divided in Voehringerites . In this regard, Voehringerites follows an evolutionary pathway that has occurred independently several times in the evolution of Palaeozoic ammonoids. Similar scenarios involving a division of the external lobe in oxyconic conchs have also been described in the early Devonian family Auguritidae ( Chlupáč & Turek 1983) and the middle Devonian family Pinacitidae (Klug & Korn 2002) .

It is noteworthy that only a little later than in Voehringerites , in the area of the boundary between the early and the middle Tournaisian, another independent line of development of acute ammonoids led to a division of the external lobe. This is the subfamily Karagandoceratinae Ruzhencev, 1960 , in which, in contrast to the Voehringeritinae , the external lobe is much smaller than the adventive lobe ( Librovitch 1940). Bartzsch & Weyer (1988a) therefore postulated the origin of the Karagandoceratinae in Nicimitoceras acre .

Stratigraphic and geographic occurrence

The subfamily is so far only known from the basal Gattendorfia Limestone (earliest Tournaisian) of the Rhenish Mountains.