Fishing in the Devonian

[Manticocerasman]

Last weekend we were invited by a few friends to joint hem on a fieldtrip in Famennian ( Late Devonian ) deposits in Belgium.

They sometimes visit this place specifically to look for Devonian plant material. Although paleobatany is not our cup of tea they convinced us to come along because they had also found fish remains from time to time, so we tagged along in the hope to find some Devonian fish.

At first we didn’t find much apart from the plant material, but one of our friends led us to a boulder where he had seen some fish scales on a previous visit.

And indeed, after closer inspection we saw a big scale on the surface, but also a fish tooth from a Dipneustes.

So once we knew what to look for we checked out different layers with the same correlation as the one where we had the first fish remains.

It didn’t take us long after that to find a deposit where we found other fish remains, although the layer was hard to get to we did find some loose rocks from there that we cracked open with good results.

Finally we got home with multiple scales from Holoptychi and Tristichopterids, a few Dipneustes teeth and we even found a quite impressive Arthrodire placoderm jaw.

Most of this material was really brittle and we had to consolidate most of the specimens before extracting them.

I would say not a bad catch for a first try at famennian fish

 

Field pictures:

 

 

 

This is an overview of some of the best finds from that day:

 

dipnoi teeth:

 

Tristichopterid:

 

Holoptychius:

 

 

The placoderm jaw:

 

 

 

 

 

[Notidanodon]

Nice finds

[Fossildude19]

Wonderful report and finds, Kevin! 

That placoderm jaw is super-cool!      

Thanks for posting them. 

[FossilDAWG]

Very nice finds!

Did you happen to take any photos of the plant fossils, even though they are "not your thing"?

 

Don

[Nautiloid]

Super Cool finds!

[Petalodus12]

This is awesome!! Congratulations on some amazing finds!

[Misha]

Super cool finds!

Paleozoic fish are so interesting

[doushantuo]

EUH, Kev I want you to know those placoderm finds of you exasperate me.

They annoy me, in a big way.

On a totally unrelated note: your specimen is slightly reminiscent of the inferognathal of Homostius.

[deutscheben]

Wow, way cool finds! And I second the request for any plant pics. 

[Manticocerasman]

1 hour ago, deutscheben said:

Wow, way cool finds! And I second the request for any plant pics. 

 

2 hours ago, FossilDAWG said:

Very nice finds!

Did you happen to take any photos of the plant fossils, even though they are "not your thing"?

 

Don

I’ll see if I can get some more pictures from my friends. 
here are a few pics from plant material.

 

 

[connorp]

That is a spectacular jaw 

[Monica]

Fantastic fish finds, Kevin! 

[Ludwigia]

Nicely done!