The early record of halysitid tabulate corals, and morphometrics of Catenipora from the Ordovician of north-central China

Catenipora is one of the most common tabulate coral genera in the Upper Ordovician Jinghe and Beiguoshan formations on the southern margin of the Ordos Basin, north-central China. We distinguish and identify the species of Catenipora using multivariate morphometric procedures. Cluster analysis based on morphological characters of coralla yields a dendrogram showing five morphospecies. The validity and distinctiveness of the morphospecies are evaluated by discriminant analysis and non-metric multidimensional scaling. To identify the species represented by the morphospecies, type specimens of species that are morphologically similar from north-central China (Sino-Korean Block) and surrounding palaeocontinents are compared with the morphospecies by non-metric multidimensional scaling and descriptive statistics. The result indicates that one morphospecies represents C. daliangensis (Yu), another represents C. subovata Yu, and the others are considered to be new species named C. tongchuanens...