[en] Scolecodonts (polychaete jaws) are common and diverse microfossils in many types of Palaeozoic marine sediments. They bring useful information on phylogeny of polychaete annelids and can be used as palaeoenvironmental indicators, and to a lesser degree in biostratigraphy. The number of studies on Devonian scolecodonts is, however, rather limited and in most cases single-element-based classification (parataxonomy) has been used. Here we report a well preserved assemblage of scolecodonts from the type Eifel area, Germany. The studied section lies within the Blankenheim syncline, between the villages of Blankenheim and Blankenheimerdorf. It comprises shallow shelf mixed carbonate and siliciclastic deposits of Eifelian age (kockelianus and ensensis conodont Biozones, beginning of the Kačák Event Interval) that were accumulated in near shore settings on the southern margin of the former Avalonia microcontinent.
The family-level composition of the recovered Eifelian polychaete fauna is generally similar to the Silurian associations known from Baltica, Laurentia and Perunica, predominated by polychaetaspids, particularly of the genus Oenonites, mochtyellids (Mochtyella) and paulinitids (Kettnerites). However, characteristic of the Eifelian fauna is the occurrence of kielanoprionids (Kielanoprion), a family that is unknown from the pre-Devonian. In the studied samples kielanoprionids reach up to 20% of the assemblage. Representatives of atraktoprionids, skalenoprionids and tetraprionids are much less common.
Comparison with contemporaneous polychaete faunas from other regions is complicated due to limited number of studies. However, the Eifelian assemblage seems to be very similar to those described previously from the Middle Devonian of North America and Upper Devonian of Poland. This suggests that many Devonian polychaetes were both long-ranging and geographically widespread.
Good preservation of specimens at hand brings also new information on poorly known jawed polychaete taxa and helps to elucidate some aspects of the phylogeny of the group.
The research was supported by the Czech Science Foundation (project P210/12/2018), the European Union through the European Social Fund (Mobilitas grant MJD407) and FWF P 23775-B17 (Austrian Science Fund).
