Earth science collections of the Centre Grégoire Fournier (Maredsous) with comments on Middle Devonian–Carboniferous brachiopods and trilobites from southern Belgium

Abstract

1. Introduction The Centre Gregoire Fournier (CGF) is part of the Maredsous Abbey (Denee, southern Belgium) and is home to the most important collection of invertebrates (e.g., brachiopods, echinoids, graptolites) and vertebrates (fishes) from the Visean (Moliniacian) ‘black marble’ of Denee, which ranks among the few fossil conservation deposits of the Belgian Carboniferous (see references in Mottequin, 2008a and Mottequin et al., 2015). Although the other palaeontological collections gathered by Dom Gregoire Fournier (1863-1931) cannot be compared with those of the ‘black marble’ of Denee, they include some types and illustrated specimens, notably of goniatites (Delepine, 1940) and fishes (Leriche, 1908), but also worthwhile material generally coming from Ordovician–Carboniferous sections located around Maredsous. The Centre Gregoire Fournier was originally the museum of natural sciences of the abbatial school of the Maredsous Abbey (Genard, 2018, 2019). Besides the mineralogical and palaeontological collections, this local museum comprises archaeological, botanical, petrological and zoological ones (Henrard, 1951; Parent, 1977, 1979). The three first objectives of the paper are related to the Centre Gregoire Fournier. This contribution aims at (1) providing brief information on its mineralogical and petrological (meteorites) collections, (2) documenting the types and illustrated specimens included in its palaeontological collections (to the exception of those from the ‘b