Antique Devonian coral and sponge slices in a Devonshire marble desk tray: piece by piece identifications.

July 24

Due to a long term interest in 19th century Devonshire Devonian coral specimens, I've been looking for an example of this local marble ware to analyse for quite a while. (It's not quite a true marble but a limestone that has undergone low grade metamorphism.)

Made probably circa 1860-1870, it shows a good selection of corals and stromatoporoids that were typically sourced from S. Devon beach pebbles. These in turn are largely derived from Permo-Triassic conglomerate that contains large quantities of Middle Devonian fossiliferous pebbles.
Pieces 3 & 24 are intriguing as they seem to be Carboniferous Lithostrotion which I haven't come across before in any similar pieces.

The malachite was imported from the Urals (at high expense). There are a few plain sediment slices, probably local although no. 8 may be Italian marble.

There's some damage (which made it affordable!) mainly to the black Belgian? marble base but the all-important coral and stromatoporoid plaquettes are fine.

The original glass ink bottle is missing and has been replaced by a mosaic lid which is probably from a separate matching ink stand. (The three other trays I've seen have original glass ink bottles with metal lids.) Technically it's more damage but a bonus for the palaeontologist.

Numbered for IDs below.

1 stromatoporoid ? Dendrostroma

2 solitary rugose Acanthophyllum

3 rugose, apparently Lithostrotion (L. decipiens?)Mississippian . I don't know of a Devonian coral like this, with thin septa and a columella. It's possibly from the Bristol area - they sometimes used Carboniferous oolite from there. Or more intriguingly it may have come from the Permian conglomerate - though I can't find any mention of non-Devonian corals from it.