Dufrenoyia furcata (Sowerby 1836)

Taxonomy

Ammonite

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Mollusca
Class: Cephalopoda
Order: Ammonitida
Family: Deshayesitidae
Genus: Dufrenoyia
Species: Dufrenoyia furcata
Author Citation Sowerby 1836

Geological Time Scale

Eon: Phanerozoic
Era: Mesozoic
Period: Cretaceous
Sub Period: None
Epoch: Early
International Age: Late Aptian

Stratigraphy

Gargasian
Provincial Facies

Provenance

Collector: Roger Furze
Date Collected: 08/07/2003
Acquired by: Field Collection

Dimensions

Diameter: 3.5 cm

Location

Oppedette
Provence
France

• a47
• aptian
• dufrenoyia
• provence

Comments

This is the first in a series of some of the pyritized ammonite fauna from the Provence in southern France which I'll be posting bit by bit over the next week or so. During a summer vacation a few years ago I spent 3 weeks walking, or sometimes climbing up and down the marly hillsides with my nose to the ground, checking out ravines and gullies on my hands and knees in search of these miniature jewels which regularly weather out of the clayey Early Cretaceous sediments. There are similar sites in the Jurassic, but they were too far away from our cottage. I visited exclusively sites in the Valanginian which, according to Kilian(1907-13), houses over 90 species, and in the Aptian, the age named after the locality Apt in the Provence. Practically all of these ammonites are mostly the inner whorls of the phragmocone, or at the most complete phragmocones of what in many cases were much larger creatures.