A couple of brachiopods from Kentucky

My friend Mike, over at his Louisville Fossils blog, sent me a couple of brachiopods from Kentucky that I didn't have in my collection.

The first one is a huge Syringothyris Pedicle valve from the Mississippian aged Muldraugh formation. It's just the single valve and he had to cut it out of the hard limestone, but it's pretty cool! Mike has a more complete one on his blog here.

Anterior

Posterior

The other brachiopod is Pentamerus nysius from the Louisville Limestone of Kentucky which is Silurian in age (Homerian to Gorstian stage). Again it's just a single valve (in this case the Brachial) but you can see the outline of the Pedicle valve just above the tip. Mike has one posted on his blog here.

Thanks to Mike for sending me these cool fossils!

Fossils I've traded away

I often write about the fossils I've received in trades with other collectors, well today I'm going to show some of the specimens that I've sent out. In many cases these are specimens that are nice but I'm not really interested in keeping as part of my collection. Others are especially picked for their recipients since they are good friends or have sent me very nice material in the past.


First up is this Silurian aged Dalmanites from the Rochester shale of New York. I sent it to mon ami en France, Gery who loves Trilobites. If you've been reading my blog for a while you'll note that there are many fine fossils that Gery has sent me from France so it is the least I can do for him in exchange.

This next piece is a fossil fish, Eohiodon rosei , from the Eocene aged Tranquil shale of British Columbia, Canada. I'd purchased this specimen a few years ago and although I did like it, I felt that my friend Dan would appreciate it more. He lives in BC and has not yet had a chance to collect from the site but has similarly aged beds near him that yield well preserved insects and leaves. He has sent me some nice Trilobites from the Cambrian aged Tanglefoot Creek shale as seen here... and he even wrote a guest blog about them here!

My collection is richer thanks to the generosity of these two excellent collectors!

More Ukrainian Fossils

There were some other fossils that came with the Cephalaspis skulls from the Ukraine. These were from Ordovician aged rocks near Ternopol and look similar to fossils I've found in Ohio and Kentucky.

Here is a fossil hash plate with a mixture of Brachiopods and Tentaculites.




This is a large orthoconic Cephalopod that has been glued together to display the large size the creature attained. I've seen specimens as large as this from the Ordovician rocks around Cincinnati before but they are always in a huge chunk of rock or broken into many smaller pieces.






Finally some Platyceras snails. These came with a label that indicated they were from Ordovician rocks around Ternopol, but the morphology of the snails, and the genera name given to them (Praenatica which is an alternate spelling of Platyceras) indicate a Devonian age.





I wish I knew more about these fossils, their geology and where they were found but sometimes you can't get that kind of information through a fossil trade. Since Gery did not collect these himself (he received them in a trade from the Ukrainian collector) he does not have first hand knowledge. If anyone reading this knows of where to find more information about fossils from the Ternopol region and Ukraine in general please let me know.

Cephalaspis

As I have mentioned in previous posts, one of the benefits of trading fossils with other collectors is that you can get material that you otherwise would not be able to due to geography or expense. As part of a recent trade with my friend Gery from France, he sent me some fossils of a primitive fish from the Ukraine. It's called Cephalaspis, from the Greek words kephalikos (head) and aspis (shield), and has a flat, boomerang or arrow shaped angular head.




Cephalaspis was a jaw less fish that lived in the Early Devonian swamps of Europe. Another specimen that I received:



Since it had no jaw, the mouth was on the bottom of the skull. The head is angular shaped and scientists have found sensory pits along the skull edges. With this kind of arrangement I would expect this fish to have been a bottom feeder and the skull shape perhaps allowed it to dig in the soft sediments for prey. Maybe it also dug into the sediments and laid in wait since the eyes are on top of the skull.

Here is a closeup of the side of the skull where you can see some of the bone structure.



Cephalaspis was featured in the BBC/Discovery series "Walking with Monsters"

More information about this ancient fish can be found at Wikipedia

Another picture of a complete fossil fish can be found at the Natuual History Museum in London

Check out all the pictures you can find for at Google Images

Ammonites from France

Another person I've had the pleasure to trade with lives in France. His name is Gery and while we have only exchanges two packages so far, He has sent me some great specimens. Gery collects in Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks and also a little bit of Miocene sediments that are in the northwest part of France. Our trades started as an exchange of Brachiopods but have grown to include most anything fossilized. I have little to no access to Ammonites, Echinoids and Brachiopods from the Jurassic and Cretaceous in my local rocks so our exchanges help expand that portion of my collection while also adding some European flavor.

Below are some of the fossils that he's sent me.

Brachiopods:

Kutchiryhchia (Middle Jurassic, Bathonien - Luc sur Mer, Calvados, France)


Digona (Middle Jurassic, Bathonien - Luc sur Mer, Calvados, France)


Selthiris sella (Middle Jurassic, Bathonien - Luc sur Mer, Calvados, France)




Ammonites:

Pleydellia (Lower Jurassic, Toarcian - Saint Quentin Fallavier, France)


Stephanoceras (Middle Jurassic, Bajocian - Caen, France)


Leioceras - (Middle Jurassic, Aalenian - Calvados, France)




Echinoids:

Micraster (Upper Cretaceous, Turonian - Ault, France)


Scutella (Tertiary, Miocene - Doue la Fontaine, France)


Hemicidaris luciensis (Middle Jurassic, Bathonien - Luc sur Mer, Calvados, France)

Cambrian Trilobites

I like to trade fossils with other collectors around the world. It allows me to expand my collection without spending a lot of money and I get to move some extra material out of the house. As I mentioned in the previous post, I had the pleasure of trading with Dan B. who lives in British Columbia, Canada. He sent me some interesting Trilobites from a Cambrian exposure on Tanglefoot Creek, BC.

As Dan mentioned in his guest post, the Trilobites are preserved in layers of Calcite nodules or as stacks of wafers. In the specimen below you can see the impression of a Trilobite on the top part of a wafer stack. When you turn it on it's side you can see the layers of Calcite. After flipping the piece over you see the bottom layer has an impression as well but it's the inverse of the top impression. It kind of look like two Trilobites died on top of one another in perfect orientation, but this is not the case.






Here are a few of the ID'ed trilobites that Dan sent me. This first picture has three species (from left to right): Hedinaspis canadensis, Wujiajiania sutherlandi, Labiostria westropi




These next two are Wujiajiania sutherlandi as well.



I can see similarities to some of the common trilobites from the House Range in Utah, which is middle Cambrian in age (507-505 Ma), like Asaphiscus (left) and Elrathia (right) below.





While doing research on the site I found an interesting story about one of these Trilobite fossils being found associated with ancient native artifacts at this Living Landscapes page. (scroll down about 3/4 of the way to the Tanglefoot Creek part)