Pseudoceratina crater
Creators: name: Gunther, Albert C. L. G.
name: Dallas, William S.
name: Carruthers, William
name: Francis, William
Publisher: name: TAYLOR AND FRANCIS
Year: 1885
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Porifera
Demospongiae
Verongiida
Pseudoceratida
Pseudoceratina
Pseudoceratina crater

description: Pseudoceratina crateriformis (provisional).
Alassive, sessile, wide, conical, wrinkle-ridged, truncated at the summit by the opening of a large cloacal crateriform vent. Consistence resilient. Colour, wdien fresh, “ greenish grey;” the same now. Surface deeply wrinkled with high ridges more or less interunited by ramification; the whole covered with a sandy incrustation in the form of a minutely reticulated or sieve-like structure, whose interstices are tympanized by the dermal membrane. Pores in the interstices of the retiform incrustation. Vent single on the summit, large and circular, about $ in. in diameter at the orifice, con ­ tracted inwardly by a thick, sarcodic, fleshy fold of the dermal membrane. Main fibre cored with foreign microscopic objects, sand, Ac.; lateral or interuniting fibre cored only with the grey flocculent substance, the former psammonematous, the latter luffarid, both enclosed within the same kind of amber-coloured keratine. Sarcode of the interior thick and inspissate, scantily charged with foreign material; grey in colour, supported by the fibre just described, and traversed by the branches of the excretory canal-system, which open into a general or cloacal cavity terminating in the vent at the summit. Size of specimen 24 in. high by 2| in. in dia ­ meter at the base, which is circular.
Hab. Marine.
Loc. Port Phillip Heads, South Australia. Depth?
Obs. While the presence of the luffarid “ interuniting fibre ” seems to ally this species to the Ceratina, the large wrinkled surface covered with the reticulated or cribriform incrustration, the single large terminal vent preceded by the cloaciform interior, and the fleshy character of the sarcode about the vent, ccpially ally it to Halispongia choanoides, Bk.,= Stelospongos, Sdt., and especially to the “wrinkled” surface of that specimen respresented and described by Dr. Bowerbank in the ‘ Proceedings of the Zoological Society ’ for 1872 (p. 123, pl. vi.) under the name mentioned. Hence my generic appellation should be considered “ provisional.”
As the “ granulo-flocculent grey substance ” which charac ­ terizes the core of the fibre in the Ceratina appears to me to be the same as that within the kcratose cell (“horn-cell”), and may often be seen mixed up with the foreign objects which form the core of the fibre in the Psammoncmata, it seems to me not improbable that this is the substance which first of all brings the foreign material into line for the forma ­ tion of the fibre in the latter; and that, failing to do this, the “ granulo-flocculent substance ” alone remains, which leads to the production of the genuine fibre of the Ceratina; while this failure taking place partially, may produce the mixture which is characteristic of that family of the Ceratina for which I have proposed the name of “ Pseudoceratida.”
description: Published as part of Gunther, Albert C. L. G., Dallas, William S., Carruthers, William & Francis, William, 1885, The Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Including Zoology, Botany, and Geology, pp. 1-96 in Reptiles and Batrachians from Brazil, LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.; SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO.; KENT AND CO.,; WHITT AKER AND CO.: BAILLIERE, PARIS: MACLACHLAN AND STEWART, EDINBURGH: HODGES, FOSTER, AND CO., DUBLIN: AND ASHER, BERLIN :TAYLOR AND FRANCIS on pages 205-206, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.14926803