Coolinia Bancroft, 1949

Musteikis, Petras & Cocks, L. Robin M., 2004, Strophomenide and orthotetide Silurian brachiopods from the Baltic region, with particular reference to Lithuanian boreholes, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 49 (3), pp. 455-482 : 473

Genus Coolinia Bancroft, 1949

Remarks.—The type species of the genus is Coolinia applanata (Salter in M’Coy 1846), originally described from the Telychian of Ireland, and which has also been recorded and illustrated from the Upper Llandovery Bruflat Formation of the Oslo region by Cocks and Baarli (1982: 85) and as C. aff. applanata from the Upper Llandovery of Belarus by Modzalevskaya and Pushkin (1989: 93). The most common species recorded from the Wenlock and Ludlow of Gotland is Coolinia pecten ( Linnaeus, 1758) , whose Lower Wenlock type locality is either from the Upper Visby or the Högklint Beds of Gotland ( Bassett and Cocks 1974: 18). A form identified as C. pecten was illustrated from the Lower Llandovery Juuru Formation of Estonia by Sokolskaya (1954:90) which is certainly Coolinia but the species (rather than the genus) is not known from beneath the Wenlock elsewhere and we identify the material from the illustrations as Coolinia sp. , following Rubel et al. (1984: 15). Coolinia deflexa was described within Fardenia from the Wenlock of Podolia by Tsegelnyk (1976: 75), but it has the large chilidium characteristic of Coolinia and it is uncertain from the published illustrations whether or not it is a synonym of C. pecten . The Schellwienella sp. of Rybnikova (1967: 195), from the Ludlow of Latvia, was reassigned to Morinorhynchus orbignyi ( Davidson, 1848) by Rubel et al. (1984: 16), but re−examination of Rybnikova’s 1967: pl. 21: 7 shows her material to lack the strong pseudodeltidium of Morinorhynchus and the material is reassigned here to Coolinia .

Distribution.—The genus occurs rarely in the Lithuanian boreholes, but it is not abundant and often fragmentary, and is identified here as Coolinia sp. Its distribution is the Paprieniai, Jačionys and Jonava Beds of the Birđtonas formations (Sheinwoodian) in east Lithuania; Riga (Sheinwoodian and lower Homerian) Formation in central Lithuania; upper part of the Ragainė Formation, Siesartis (Homerian), Dubysa, Rusnė, Mituva and Pagėgiai (Gorstian and Ludfordian) formations in west Lithuania (Appendix).