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Can anyone tell me what these small items are. They sort of look like little mushrooms with what seems to be a circular attachment type area and then an "upper" surface with very small dots or small bumps. The grid is 5mm on a side so these things are about 2mm x 2mm. These come from the Early Pleistocene aged Waccamaw Formation of North Carolina. From the looks and color of them, they seem like they should be Echinoderm related, but I am just guessing. I am not familiar with them and figured since I found quite a few of them, they must be something worth identifying. Perhaps @sixgill pete or @Al Dente or any micro searchers may be able to set me straight. Thanks for your help.

I have been working through a bag of matrix that I received from @sixgill pete from the Waccamaw Formation (Pleistocene) of North Carolina. Earlier I showed a couple of interesting bryozoans that I picked from the matrix (Waccamaw Bryozoan) and the first group of gastropods (Waccamaw Gastropods I). From the 1 quart bag of matrix, I pulled out over 60 different species of gastropods and am up to about 45 species of bivalves! This post represents the second group of gastropods that I have some identification questions about. Again, these are all very small, most are only a few mm's. I appreciate any input, thanks!! 1) The first one up may be the toughest, just because they are incomplete. I have tentatively called them Cerithiopsis bicolor based on Gardners 1948 work and Campbells 1993 publication on similar aged material from Virginia. As usual, I have tried to corroborate these ID's with other sources and tried to use the most up to date nomenclature based on what I find in WORMS, Fossilworks or The Neogene Atlas of Ancient Life websites. 2) Next is a really nice looking, but very small gastropod that I think may be Teinostoma carinatum based on Gardner, but T. lenticlare in Campbell also looks pretty similar. Of course, neither may be right!! This is one of three different species within the small Tornidae family that I found. 3) This one is also a very nice looking specimen but within several references I could not find a very good match. The best I could do was a species of Vexillum based on the general shape, ornamentation and columnar folds but the ones figured in both Ward and Blackwelder (1987) and Dall (1890) had differences from mine. 4) This pair may not even be the same thing as you can see there are slight differences in the ornamentation, but I have about a half dozen and they seem to al least fall into a pretty similar group. I have called these Chrysallida beaufortensis but am not at all confident in this especially since they my just be very young versions of something else. 5) This group is just part of well over a dozen that I found but can't put a good handle on. Perhaps some species of Pyrgiscus (which may now be Turbonilla)? Lea (1843) had a P. daedaleum which looked similar, but I was unable to find any reference to that species since that time. 6) And lastly, is a nice glossy but a bit chewed on specimen that I believe is a species of Turbonilla. T. delta from Campbell (1993) has a description that sounds pretty similar but the illustration in my pdf is poor so I'm not certain. OK, that is all. Again I appreciate anyone taking a look and if you have any ideas, I'm all ears! Maybe @MikeR or @Coco will have some more excellent insights this time around. Thanks again Mike

I have been working through a bag of matrix that I received from @sixgill pete from the Waccamaw Formation (Pleistocene) of North Carolina. Earlier I showed a couple of interesting bryozoans that I picked from the matrix (Waccamaw Bryozoan) and now I am finishing up on the gastropods. From the 1 quart bag of matrix, I pulled out over 60 different species of gastropods! The biggest ones were a couple of Olive shells at about 2 inches tall as well as about a half dozen other gastropods that are big enough to easily view with the naked eye, but by far the vast majority of the shells are quite small, some only a few mm's. With some great suggestions for references from both Don and @MikeR I have slogged my way through the identification process which brings me to this post. Out of the group, I have several that I am uncertain about (and probably others that I am wrong on, but ignorance is bliss! ) so I'm going to post a few in this thread and probably start a few other threads over time so I don't have one that has a billion pictures to wade through and try to keep straight. I'm hoping some folks out there can confirm and/or offer a better suggestion on an ID and certainly if you know of a name update, please let me know. The names on many of these critters have been very fluid over the past 100+ years and I consult several different websites (such as WORMS, WMSD, Neogene Atlas, etc) for each species I find to try and check for the latest updates, but some names published early on are seldom heard from again. The first question is on this group of five small gastropods (the silver box is 5mm on a side) which I believe are all the same, but.... I have tentatively called these Turritellas because of the general shape, the aperture and the sculpture (revolving lines) but they don't look straight sided enough to match most of the published forms I can find. They are undoubtedly juveniles and this may be throwing me off, but if anyone has a suggestion, I'm all ears. Some species of Bittium is another possibility. My next question is this small gastropod that looks sort of like some form of Calliostoma but I can not find a match for it in any of the references I consulted. Plus it is a bit low spired for most of the species of Calliostoma that I have seen. The third question is this gastropod which I believe is some species of Epitonium. I found three other species of this genus, but this one is different looking form any of them, the axial ornamentation is not continuous across the sutures and it changes character on the lower half of the body whorl which you can't really see in these pictures. It seems closest to E. carolinae (Gardner) but there are several differences from her description. Next is a very small and undoubtedly juvenile form that I think may be Scalaspira strumosa but I haven't found a lot of pictures of this species and it looks a little different from the drawing in the 1904 publication by the Maryland Geological Survey where Martin further described it. Lastly, for today, here is a pair of really beautiful small gastropods which I keep thinking should be easy to ID, but I can't find a match. They look like a little nutmeg shell (genus Cancellaria) with the shape and the prominent teeth or ridges on the columella, but I can not find any forms that have the very distinctive sculpture of the wide flat bands with narrow incised grooves between them. OK, that is it for now. Thanks for taking a look and for any and all suggestions.