The Fossil Lithistida Collection at the Natural History Museum, London (UK)

This paper presents a quantitative and detailed description of the Fossil Lithistida Collection in the Natural History Museum, London. This collection started to be built with the first fossil sponges from the Cretaceous of Wiltshire, collected by William Smith in 1816 and 1818 for the first geological map of England. The latest specimen to enter the collection was collected from the Permo-Carboniferous of Norway by Angela Milner, a researcher at the Museum, in 2000. Although they are mostly from the Cretaceous of England, lithistids are represented from the Cambrian to Cenozoic of England. This makes this collection key for studying this group. Lithistid study will help with understanding of biosilicification evolution in sponges to unlock the changing patterns in the silica cycle in the oceans through geological time. A dataset with information about all the Fossil Lithistida Collection is available through the NHM Data Portal and Suppl. material 1. This dataset includes taxonomic identifications, registration numbers of the specimens, geographic and stratigraphic details, information about specimen collectors and donors, type status and publications where the specimens have been referred.