Notes on Late Cretaceous – earliest Paleocene xenophorid gastropods from Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands.

In Late Cretaceous and earliest Paleocene gastropod assemblages from Denmark, north-east Belgium and the south-east Netherlands, originating from white chalk and biocalcarenitic facies alike, xenophorids or ‘carrier shells’ constitute merely a minor component. The main interest of these marine gastropods lies in the fact that they attach foreign objects, such as bivalve shells, serpulid worm tubes, bryozoans, fragments of echinoid tests and spines, as well as gastropod shells to their conchs. The first specimens of xenophorid shells, with attached foreign objects, from the lower upper Maastrichtian white chalk of Hillerslev (Jylland) are here presented, assigned to Xenophora nilssoni for the time being and compared with coeval and younger material from Belgium and the Netherlands. It appears that more than one species is represented in the latter lot, but this requires more detailed assessment of larger populations. Xenophora nilssoni is here recorded to range from the lower Campanian to upper Maastrichtian in the Netherlands-Belgium border region, while Xenophora sp. 1 refers to a population from the Meerssen Member, subunit IVf-7 (lowermost Paleocene) in southern Limburg, the Netherlands. Wherever possible, attached foreign objects are identified to genus and/or species.