Devonian Trilo-bit & other things..

[daves64]

I recently purchased some Mid Devonian silica shale pieces with trilo-bits from @connorp. And by recently I mean last month... last year..(January is always confusing that way). Just several small pieces with partial molts I'm using for practice prepping. So after picking at a few all year... one of them has gone from a practice piece to an almost show piece. 1st pic is the original sales pic with the piece circled. In it you can see part of the trilo-bit, but not really anything else. I got a nose w/ a partial eye (base only), bryozoa scattered about here & there, some tiny crinoid pieces and a thing I can't decide on. Pic labeled with a 1 is an overall shot, 2 is a close up of the nose, 3 is a bryozoa (I think) & 4 is the question one. The entire stone is 7.5 cm x 6.5 cm. Nose is 1 cm wide, the small bryozoa fan thingy is 0.5 cm wide & the question one is 2.5 cm long. I'm using a needle in a pin vise, fine scribe tip in another pin vise, dental picks & a stiff(ish) nylon brush with hydrogen peroxide, 3x led magnifying lamp & 10x loupe.

[Northern Sharks]

My first reaction is that your mystery specimen is the coral Aulopora

[FossilNerd]

I think Aulopora seems like a reasonable assumption for picture 4. Do you happen to know what formation it came out of? That may help to confirm or deny. 
 

BTW... looks like your prep is coming along nicely. Good job!  

[Shamalama]

4 minutes ago, FossilNerd said:

I think Aulopora seems like a reasonable assumption for picture 4. Do you happen to know what formation it came out of? That may help to confirm or deny. 
 

BTW... looks like your prep is coming along nicely. Good job!  

It's from the Silica Shale which is Givetian stage of the Devonian. Definitely agree that it is an Auloporoid of some sort.

[FossilNerd]

1 hour ago, Shamalama said:

It's from the Silica Shale which is Givetian stage of the Devonian. Definitely agree that it is an Auloporoid of some sort.

My bad! I should have looked more closely at the tags...

Too little sleep, not enough coffee... 

[Shamalama]

5 minutes ago, FossilNerd said:

My bad! I should have looked more closely at the tags...

Too little sleep, not enough coffee... 

All good. 

[daves64]

4 hours ago, FossilNerd said:

not enough coffee... 

There's no such thing as enough coffee. 

[daves64]

So the question thing is a coral... huh.  I was entertaining the thought that it might be a holdfast, but coral works. Just never actually seen a smooth looking coral before.

[FossilNerd]

2 hours ago, daves64 said:

There's no such thing as enough coffee. 

So true! 
 

2 hours ago, daves64 said:

So the question thing is a coral... huh.  I was entertaining the thought that it might be a holdfast, but coral works. Just never actually seen a smooth looking coral before.

I thought maybe holdfast as well at first glance, but I don’t see a central “stump” and areas such as the ones I marked below seem to be corallites.

 

 

 

 

[connorp]

That's a quite nice prep job for hand tools!