Status of the planktonic foraminiferal species Ticinella bejaouaensis Sigal, 1966 (Aptian-Albian)

Observations of the holotype and paratype of Ticinella bejaouaensis Sigal 1966, deposited at at the Natural History Museum in Paris, allowed to support the previous indication by Randrianasolo and Anglada (1998), further confirmed by Moullade et al. (2002), that the holotype and paratype of T. bejaouaensis are not conspecific and their distributions do not overlap as they occur in the upper Albian and around the Aptian/Albian boundary, respectively. In agreement with Randrianasolo and Anglada (1998) and Moullade et al. (2002), the species corresponding to Sigal’s paratype from Tunisia must be named eubejaouaensis, whereas the name of T. bejaouaensis is confined to the late Albian holotype. Moreover, based on new descriptions and SEM analysis, the former latest Aptian T. bejaouaensis, now eubejaouaensis, possesses a text ultrastructure features different from the true ticinellids suggesting that this taxon is even not congeneric with Ticinella