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Part two of our series of mystery fossils from the nature center! As I said in my previous post, this was donated to the center with no indication of where it was found or what time period it may be from, which is wildly unhelpful... But onto the details that might actually be helpful. This one is a yellow-brown mineral, with a hardness of about two. There is a piece broken off at the top and from there it can be seen how it broke in a sort of triangle, with the perfect center of the tube where the point comes together. It's not perfectly round, with long planes that are faintly tangible to fingers, but still it maintains a nice even taper down to it's point. My dad suggested it might be a crocodillian tooth, and there appear to be striations that also run the length of it, which seems consistent with the reptile tooth fossils I have seen in the past.

Ever since I first got my Scabriscutellum sp. I've felt like something was off with the pydium but could never place it. That is until today. I realised that the pydium on my trilobite was inverted as opposed to most pictures I've seen. By that I mean the lines along the pydium (sorry I don't know the technical term, if anyone wants to enlighten me that would be appreciated) which appear to be raised in most photos are depressed. Here's a picture of a "normal" scabriscutellum. (Hopefully you can tell what I'm on about.) As you can see raised lines along the pydium. However here's a picture of my scabriscutellum. As you can see quite the opposite. I'm curious is this some sort of pathology, differing species or sign of fakery? Here's where it gets interesting, circled in red are a few of several discolored spots where the shell seems to be missing. When I first noticed these I thought perhaps plastic, that the ends of the spines had broken off and replaced with painted plastic. However a hot needle test proves these spots are not plastic. Also interesting, there are what look like air bubbles in the matrix which I am 100% positive is real rock and not resin. (Result of volcanic activity maybe?) Today though I also found pictures of another scabriscutellum with the weird tail and it also has the discoloration. I'm honestly a bit confused and a lot curious any opinions are appreciated.