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Found this while mushroom hunting


Hillbenny

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I found this on top of the ground while mushroom hunting.  I have collected arrowheads, fossils, and other odd/cool looking rocks for a number of years but have never seen anything like it before. I found it a few miles south east of  Calhoun,Missouri  close to Henry county road NE 300, and a few yards from Tebo creek. 

I appreciate any help identifying what it is and approximately how old.

 

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Brachiopod steinkern methinks.

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Mark.

 

Fossil hunting is easy -- they don't run away when you shoot at them!

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Seemed to show internal features of brachiopods (from the little experience I have with them). :)

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

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Please excuse my ignorance, is a  Brachiopod something like a clam or muscle?...I thought it looked like it had, well for lack of a better term, a "face" . I think I see a head, and a mouth with two teeth sticking up. But I honestly have no idea. 

Should I try to take it out of the rock that it's in? It looks like it is separated from the rock around it. But I don't want to do anything  to break it or screw it up, though I'm very curious as to what it looks like underneath

 

 

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3 minutes ago, Hillbenny said:

is a  Brachiopod something like a clam or muscle?

A brachiopod is similar to bivalves such as clams but they aren't very closely related.

Bivalves are mollusks like snails and squids while brachiopods are not. They have several anatomical differences but they do resemble clams. 

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7 minutes ago, Hillbenny said:

Please excuse my ignorance, is a  Brachiopod something like a clam or muscle?...

Totally different and unrelated group of animals. But they do have two valves like clams and mussels. 

Yours is an orthid, maybe something like Hebertellla. 

I would leave it in the matrix myself. 

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brachiopods-vs-bivalves.jpg

 

Image from HERE.

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2 hours ago, Hillbenny said:

Should I try to take it out of the rock that it's in? It looks like it is separated from the rock around it. But I don't want to do anything  to break it or screw it up, though I'm very curious as to what it looks like underneath

 

No. What you have is the mold formed of a mineral that solidified inside of the shell. Most of the shell has weathered away, except for a bit here and there between the mold and the rock matrix. There is nothing inside of it. It is what was inside the shell after the animal died and its body rotted away. The hard shell was left behind and preserved, eventually filled by a mineral in solution that, from the looks of it, crystallized inside, and the shell began to dissolve and/or be eroded away leaving the mold behind. That crack/space between the mold and the rock is where the shell used to be.

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Mark.

 

Fossil hunting is easy -- they don't run away when you shoot at them!

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Thank you all for identifying it for me. It's gonna get a center spot in my display case. 

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