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Ullmannia frumentaria is the most common and long known conifer of the copper shale. The plant has densely standing, relatively short, spirally arranged leaves.

Also: Acentrophorus glaphyrus Taxonomy from Fossilworks.org. Description for the genus from Woodward 1895, p. 51: "Trunk fusiform. Teeth slender ; opercular apparatus well- developed, with a narrow arched preoperculum. Pins small, with very large fulcra ; dorsal fin short, opposed to the space between the pelvic pair and the anal ; caudal fin symmetrical, slightly forked. Scales rhombic, smooth or feebly ornamented, the dorsal ridgeseries inconspicuous ; the scales of the flank not much deeper than broad, and those of the ventral aspect nearly equilateral" Line drawing from Gill 2009, p. 37: Identified by oilshale. References: Agassiz, L. (1833) Recherches Sur Les Poissons Fossiles. Tome IV (livr. 1). Imprimerie de Petitpierre, Neuchatel 17-32 [M. Carrano/M. Carrano] Howse, R. (1848) A catalogue of the fossils of the Permian system of the counties of Northumberland and Durham. Transactions of the Tyneside Naturalists' Field Club 1:219-264 [M. Clapham/M. Clapham/M. Clapham] Woodward, A. S. (1895) Catalogue of the Fossil Fishes in the British Museum (Natural History), Part III 1-544 [M. Clapham/M. Clapham] Gill, E. L. (2009). The Permian Fishes of the Genus Acentrophorus*. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 93(1), 19–40. Diedrich, C. G. (2009) A coelacanthid-rich site at Hasbergen (NW Germany): taphonomy and palaeoenvironment of a first systematic excavation in the Kupferschiefer (Upper Permian, Lopingian). Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments 89:67-94 [M. Clapham/P. Vazquez]

The most common fish in copper shale. References: Blainville, H.-M. D. (1818). Sur les Ichthyolites, les Poisons Fossiles; Article extrait du Nouveau Dictionnaire d’Histoire Naturelle, vol. 28, Abel Lange, p. 16. K. H. Wedepohl. Composition and origin of the Kupferschiefer bed. Geological Quarterly, Vol. 38. No. 4, 1994, p.623-638 . Günther Schaumberg (1977) Der Richelsdorfer Kupferschiefer und seine Fossilien, III. Der Aufschluss 28 (8/9): 297-352.