What question did this study set out to answer?

To document the second occurrence of molpadid sea cucumber calcareous rings from the Upper Cretaceous period and compare them to existing species.

July 16, 2026PalZ1 citationsOpen Access

Molpadid holothurian calcareous ring material from the early Maastrichtian Rügen Chalk, Germany

MRMike Reich MKManfred Kutscher TSTanja R. Stegemann

Key Points

To document the second occurrence of molpadid sea cucumber calcareous rings from the Upper Cretaceous period and compare them to existing species.
Described calcareous ring material from early Maastrichtian chalk in Rügen, Germany.
Performed morphological comparisons with extant molpadid forms.
Identified a new genus and species, Cretacaudina rugia, from the fossil record.
Demonstrated that these fossils provide insights into the evolutionary history of molpadid sea cucumbers.

Abstract

Molpadid sea cucumbers are important components of the infaunal benthos in today’s marine ecosystems. This can also be assumed for Cenozoic and partly Mesozoic times. However, the fossil record to date is more than patchy and also concerns the Upper Cretaceous, for example. From the early Maastrichtian chalk of the Jasmund Peninsula/Isle of Rügen, the world’s only second record of late Cretaceous calcareous ring material of molpadid sea cucumbers ( Cretacaudina rugia gen. et sp. nov.) is described, discussed and subsequently morphologically compared with extant forms.

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Cite This Study

Reich et al. (Tue,) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a5873ed2b46c88ba9ad039d https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s12542-026-00797-6

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