Matskási István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 79. (Budapest 1987)
Kecskeméti, T.: Contributions to the phylogenetic connections of Nummulites species
to get extinct at what may correspond to the Middle/Upper Oligocène boundary. With its extinction, not only the fabianii lineage gets extinct, but one of the geohistorically longestlived taxa of Nummulites does so as well. N. striatus group The main criterion of assignation to this group has been the striation, i. e. the radial or differently curved behaviour and arrangement of the mostly saliant septal lines. In this respect an extremely wide range of variability can be observed which causes a lot of difficulties in the differentiation of the individual taxa. Additional complications are due to the multitude of insufficiently defined taxa, to problems arising from a lot of nomenclatural differences and from different stratigraphie interpretations (in the second case, it is particularly the heterochronous homeomorphs that are difficult to assess). To add to these difficulties, let us quote the poor understanding of the species assigned to this group. Accordingly, the A R . stria/iAy-group is the phylogenetically most unclear group of Nummulites and at present the research into Nummulites is still far from being able to give an exact scheme of the phylogeny of this group. (The heterogeneity of the group and the existence of still unsolved problems are evident from the fact that the species of the N. garnieri group with a punctuate and striate ornamentation are, for the moment, assigned to the N. striatus group, too.) The uncertainty stemming from the foregoing is reflected by the scheme proposed by the present writer as well. The stock of the group is considered to be represented by the Upper Ilerdian — Lower Cuisian N. atacicus that sprang from N. praecursor, from spanning the lower interval of the Ilerdian. Nothing is known of whether N. atacicus or its offspring, if any, might have further developed in Late Cuisian — Early Lutetian time. (Soviet authors are unanimous in believing that N. atacicus persisted throughout the Middle Eocene and that N. striatus stemmed from it.) According to published data (BLONDEAU 1972), its principal characters are recognizable in N. atacicus striatiformis, N. acutus and N. biarritzensis, forms that lived much later. N. atacicus striatiformis is a local form occurring in Soviet Georgia, N. acutus is an Asian —Indian regional taxon. N. biarritzensis has been given widely varying taxonomic and stratigraphie interpretations. Since no reliable comparative material of it is available to the author, he has adopted the opinion of SCHAUB (HOTTINGER & SCHAUB 1960) and BLONDEAU (1972) on this matter, suggesting that N. biarritzensis is an Upper Lutetian taxon that can be derived, through intermediate taxa from N. atacicus. Because of the above difficulty it has so far been impossible to identify N. biarritzensis in this country for certain. Thus in the scheme proposed here its phylogenetic position is given as a probability borrowed from BLONDEAU (BLONDEAU 1972). It is from it or from a stratigraphically deeper-situated ancestor of it that N. subplanulatus and N. kovacsiensis, forms very closely related to biarritzensis, and finely striated N. subtilis maior and robust-shelled N. kopeki, forms described quite recently (KECSKEMÉTI & VANOVÁ 1972, KECSKEMÉTI 1974), seem to have evolved. N. subplanulatus was reported from several non-Hungarian localities, but its stratigraphie position was given erroneously in all cases. The error is due to a paper by SCHAUB (1951) in which N. subplanulatus is reported from the Cuisian. On the basis of topotypes received from the present writer, SCHAUB later corrected his standpoint and he re-identified the taxon that had been referred to as N. subplanulatus, under the name of A R . soerenbergensis (SCHAUB 1965). Unfortunately, the correction has been overlooked by several scientists. This may have been responsible for the fact that in some stratigraphie schemes the range of N. subplanulatus is given, erroneously, as Cuisian, Upper Ilerdian — Lower Cuisian or Upper Ypresian. respectively (NEMKOV 1967, BLONDEAU 1972, GOLEV 1978) rather than Upper Lutetian. Having the same stratigraphie range as N. subplanulatus, the species N. kovacsiensis,
