Thursday, March 8, 2012

Eospirifer brachiopods from England

I purchased some brachiopod fossils recently from a seller on E-bay called bonesfossils. They are labelled as Eospirifer radiatus from the Wenlock formation near Dudley, Worcestershire, England. I bought them because they came from a formation which gave it's name to a geologic time epoch of the Silurian, and it was a brachiopod species that I had found previously in the Waldron shale of Indiana.

There is a problem though... look at the pictures I took of two different specimens that came in the lot.

Specimen 1 Pedicle valve
Anterior

Brachial valve

Posterior

Profile

Specimen 2 Pedicle valve

Anterior

Brachial valve

Posterior

Profile

If you haven't picked up on it yet, the problem is that these specimens are labelled as Eospirifer radiatus and yet specimens that I've found in the Waldron shale with that same name look completely different. Click here for my post on the Eospirifer radiatus I found, and here for a very good write up that Mike over at Louisville Fossils did. Mike's post has good references, that I don't want to duplicate here, as to where the ID for our fossils came from.

What do you think?

5 comments:

  1. It looks to be a nice fossil brachiopod!

    If I found a brachiopod like that in the Indiana Waldron Shale, I would identify it as an Eospirifer eudora.

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  2. hello Dave,

    E.radiatus is like that
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/jarlen5/5815321455/
    I got one for you next time!
    Christian

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  3. Mike, I agree with you that this should be called Eospirifer eudora and that is how I will label it.

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  4. Christian, The fossil in the link you posted does indeed look like an Eospirifer radiatus! There are many other fine looking fossils on that Flickr account too. Thanks for the link!

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    Replies
    1. Hello Dave,
      I got 3 like that, but I will be on site end of March, depend the tide because is on level 0(sea level).Tide is aléatoire in the baltic sea....But I will send you one nice exemplar next time at least
      Christian

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