Some Miocene cheilostome bryozoan genera of Michel Vigneaux – systematic revision and scanning electron microscopic study

In 1949 Michel Vigneaux published an important taxonomic work on fossil bryozoans that introduced numerous new taxa at family-, genus- and species-levels, the majority of which are still used today, in some cases for extant bryozoans. However, Vigneaux’s material from the Miocene of the Aquitaine Basin in France has never been revised. Here we employ scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to study Vigneaux’s type specimens of the type species of five of his genera: Hemiphylactella, Pleuromucrum, Stephanollina, Schizosmittina and Hemicosciniopsis. Based on this revision, Pleuromucrum is considered to be a subjective senior synonym of both Lifuella Gordon & d’Hondt, 1997 and Allorhynchozoon Liu in Liu, Yin & Ma, 2001.