A late Paleocene‐early Eocene (c. 60–53 Ma) poriferan fauna, comprising hexactinellids (Class Hexactinellida), astrophorids (Class Demospongiae: Family Astrophorida), and lithistids (“lithistid” Demospongiae) has been identified from the Tutuiri Greensand outcropping on the north coast of Chatham Island, New Zealand. Most of the fossils are hexactinellids, comprising extremely delicate siliceous networks embedded in friable sa...

A submarine lantern system was trailed in the aquaculture of explants of the endemic New Zealand bath‐sponge Spongia ( Heterofibria ) manipulatus (Demospongiae: Dictyoceratida: Spongiidae) at four New Zealand sites, two in the Marlborough Sounds and two off Coromandel Peninsula. The main objectives were to compare growth rates of explants at different sites, compare these with those of control sponges, and to assess the utilit...

Several sponges with a thin encrusting form and of fragile construction have been collected in the Indo‐Pacific, and have proved difficult to differentiate, let alone identify, without recourse to electron microscopy. Here we re‐describe Halisarca melana de Laubenfels, 1954 from Palau, and H. metabola de Laubenfels, 1954 from Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands from new material, emphasising field characters such as coloratio...

The skeleton of the New Zealand endemic sponge Spongia ( Heterofibria ) manipulatus (Demospongiae: Dictyoceratida: Spongiidae) has physical qualities that make it suitable for use as a bath‐sponge. The species is particularly abundant around exposed coastlines of D'Urville Island in the Marlborough Sounds and on the east coasts of Northland and Coromandel Peninsula. Growth rates and changes in the shape of explants of S . ( H...

Diagnostic morphological characters for the sponge genus Pleroma , relicts from a diverse group of lithistid sponges (Suborder Megamorina: Family Pleromidae) that were once common in the north‐western European late Jurassic to the late Cretaceous (c. 140–65 Ma), are reviewed following examination of new collections of known species from northern New Zealand and the south New Caledonian slope. Before this work, only two living...

Numerous remarkably well‐preserved lithistid sponges recovered from the late Eocene‐early Oligocene Ototara Limestone at Kakanui, North Otago, represent the first sponge body fossils to be described from the New Zealand Cainozoic. The sponges are scattered throughout a 1–3‐m‐thick volcaniclastic limestone horizon immediately overlying the Kakanui Mineral Breccia. The fossils are now solid calcite, the former siliceous skeleton...