Benthonic synonyms

To this inconceivably slowly-growing deposit of inorganic material over the ocean floor there is added an overwhelmingly more rapid contribution of the remains of calcareous and siliceous planktonic and benthonic organisms, which tend to bury the slower accumulating material under a blanket of globigerina, pteropod, diatom or radiolarian ooze.

Murray and Renard define globigerina ooze as containing at least 30% of calcium carbonate, in which the remains of pelagic (not benthonic) foraminifera predominate and in which remains of pelagic mollusca such as pteropods and heteropods, ostracodes and also coccoliths (minute calcareous algae) may also occur.

As respects the mode of life of the Graptolites there can be little doubt that the Dendroidea were, with some exceptions, sessile or benthonic animals, their polyparies, like those of the recent Calyptoblastea, growing upwards, their bases remaining attached to the sea floor or to foreign bodies, usually fixed.

The Graptoloidea have also been regarded by some as benthonic organisms. A more prevalent view, however, is that the majority were pseudo-planktonic or drifting colonies, hanging from the underside of floating seaweeds; their polyparies being each .suspended by the nema in the earliest stages of growth, and, in later stages, some by the nemacaulus, while others became adherent above by means of a central disk or by parts of their dorsal walls.