Hyneria lindae tooth from the Catskill formation

Pennsylvania is fortunate to have some rocks that record a rich record of fish as they were starting to diversify.  There are a few well known exposures of the Catskill formation which will yield fossils of these early fishes and one of them is called Red Hill. I have been collecting at that site once as part of an organized field trip. The site is managed by local authorities and the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences and limits the number of collectors who visit. The fossil below was found at the site but not by me. I purchased it as I was not lucky enough to find one for myself. It is a tooth from a fish called Hyneria lindae which was an lobe finned fish. Those were the fish that eventually went on to learn to crawl onto mudflats and became Amphibians and Reptiles. 

Hyneria lindae was a good sized fish with an estimated length of 10' in larger specimens. It was a top predator in it's ecosystem and the tooth below shows you why. It is a long tooth but missing the very tip. Were it a little wider and flatter you'd think it belonged to a shark, but as it is one could almost see it in a Crocodile or Theropod dinosaurs mouth. Suffice to say, it looks like a tooth that a predator would have.

I've posted a scale from this giant fish on a previous blog post.

Here is a great page from the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences that shows some of the fossils of Hyneria lindae and talks about how an artist came up with a painting of this long extinct creature.

The rocks at Red Hill are Devonian in age (upper Famennian stage) at about 360 myo and belong to the Duncannon member of the Castskill formation.

Fish teeth from Red Hill

The last piece I have to show you from Red Hill is this chunk of fossil hash. It is full of tiny fish teeth that I imaged with my Zorb Microscope/camera.

The sample

These are close ups of the teeth I found in the sample. For reference the width of the viewed are in each picture is about 9mm.

This appears to be a piece of bone. Same scale as above.

Red Hill is a road cut in north central PA that exposes part of the Catskill formation which is upper Devonian (Famennian stage) in age.

Osteolepid (?) fish scale from Red Hill

On another piece of matrix from Red Hill is a different type of scale from the Hyneria specimen I posted yesterday. This one is smaller and has a pattern of fine lines radiating from the center to the edge of the scale

This is a close up mosaic of the scale that I put together with my Zorb microscope/camera.

I think this is a scale from a Osteolepis type fish based on the photos from this site (scroll down about 3/4 of the way to see a picture of a similar scale).
Red Hill is a roadcut in north central PA that exposes part of the Catskill formation which is uppee Devonian (Famennian stage) in age.

Hyneria scale from Red Hill

Red Hill is a road cut in north central Pennsylvania that exposes part of the Catskill formation from the late Devonian (Famennian stage). I've never been there but hope to visit in a week or two with the Delaware Valley Paleontological Society. In the meantime I have a couple of fossils I can show you that I've purchased.

Below is a single scale from a Sarcopterygians (lobe-fin fish) called Hyneria lindae

Closeups of the scale edge shows a lacy structure

I like the layering that is visible in some parts

There are lots of good resources out on the internet for this site and the fossils found there. The best that I've found is the "Devonian Times" site.