Revisión de la colección de Conulariidae de The Natural History Museum de Londres (Reino Unido)

Resum

The present work seeks to advance our knowledge of the conulariids, for that it has been consented to one of the biggest collections in the world and the most diverse of all: the collection of conulariids of The Natural History Museum of London. This collection contains Specimens from 165 locations among United Kingdom and 20 more countries, from rock units from Late Cambrian to Late Triassic in age. The present study deals with the anatomy, taxonomy, and stratigraphical and geographical distribution of forty three species collectively distributed among eight genera and represented by 753 out of 1,131 specimens of the collection. Their stratigraphical distribution has been analyzed, besides a systematic classification has been showed according to the recent studies. Their morphology has also been studied, and a Spanish terminology for the morphology of conulariids in general is proposed, and for the first time they are compared with the coronatid scyphozoan, Atorella Vanhöffen, 1902. Besides, the reconstruction proposed by Kiderlen (1937: fig. 46A) for a living conulariid is modified with the stalk; on the other hand, the internal cavity has been interpreted graphically, for the first time, considering conulariids as scyphozoans. Analysis of the history of conulariid research, from 1793 to the present, reveals four historical stages in the study of these fossils.