Sunday, June 26, 2011

Preserved Productid spines

Another nice discovery for me in that pile of upper Devonian Wiscoy formation rock from NY was this hash plate of Brachiopods. There are several different genera present but what really caught my eye was the Brachiopod on the far right with preserved spines.



The presence of the spines is very interesting as often they are broken off when the shell is tossed around by currents after the animal dies. This shell must have been buried fairly rapidly so that the delicate spines were still intact. I think it's a Productella sp. based on the preserved spines but the rest of the exposed fossil is just an internal mold. Another possibility is Spinatrypa which also has spines as part of it's shell. 

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