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Carpospongia langei Von Hacht, 1994
Discussion – Von Hacht (1994) established the astylospongiid species Carpospongia langei, in order to distinguish globular sponges with extremely long tubercles from Carpospongia castanea (Roemer, 1861). Recently, the present author studied a sponge assemblage in the collections of the VSEGEI in St. Petersburg (Russia). The material had been collected from the Shundorovo Formation, which is exposed in a quarry southwest of St. Petersburg (Iskyul & Fedkovets, 2008). It is coeval with the upper part of the Estonian Idavere Substage (C3 ), and possibly with a part of the lavender-blue silicifications in Germany and the Netherlands, which is associated with the Lausitz-Sylt sponge assemblage.
A number of specimens appeared to be identical to C. langei, but were labelled Carpospongia pogrebowi Asatkin, 1949. The assemblage was very similar to the astylospongiid part of the erratic Lausitz-Sylt sponge assemblage mentioned above. Asatkin had collected sponges from about the same outcrop during the 1920s. In his first paper on this subject, Asatkin (1931) described the sponge as Carpospongia sp. In his posthumously published chapter in the Russian Atlas (Asatkin, 1949), he described it as the new species C. pogrebowi.
Unfortunately, his publications remained unnoticed in the European and American literature (Rhebergen, 2009). They are of such importance that they will be subject of a future paper, because they deal with the first sponge association from bedrock from Baltica to be recorded, including the oldest astylospongiids worldwide (Mehl-Janussen, 1999). Then, the coeval Russian, Estonian and erratic sponge associations will be compared extensively. At present, I confine myself to the conclusion that, on account of priority, the name Carpospongia langei Von Hacht, 1994, is invalid, being a junior synonym of Carpospongia pogrebowi Asatkin, 1949.