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Fossil Shell?


Jeff Stafford

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Could some one tell me about this Shell

It was found in the White River-N.W.Arkansas

I have not done any thing to it-it is in as found condition

It is 3 inch long

2-1/2 inch wide

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post-753-1220478948_thumb.jpg

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This clam really shows a lot of wear and has lost many identifying characteristics. Also many pelecypod Orders and Families strech back to the Paleozoic so it will be difficult to define this specimen.

JKFoam

The Eocene is my favorite

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This looks more like a well worn Brachiopod to me, probably a Strophomenid. Both halfs of the animal's shell are there. This concavo-convex symetry often ascotiaed with this order. One shell is convex shaped like a ball, and the other is concave, shaped like a bowl so one fits inside the other. In cross section they look like a crecent moon.

Just my opinion,

Walt

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Guest N.AL.hunter

Not a brachiopod, sorry. It is a bivalve, but is a pelecypod as previously stated. And there is only one valve present as evidenced by the socket area in the umbra.

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Agreed; the asymmetry is all pelecypoda.

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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Yes, what they said. For you Americans out there, who like those funny commercials where an actor "translates" an accident victim's recounting of their experience, it's a clam. The problem is, it was in a river. And your basic clammy clams haven't exactly existed for a brief window of time. Therefore, we're looking at no strata or locality info, because rivers run through lots of area and carry snarge far from where it's "history" was. And clams have long histories. So unless you can pirogue upstream from where you found the clam, and locate the clam "mother lode", and identify the locality on a geological map, etc. etc., then you're left with paying beaucoup bucks for radiometric dating. Which is what I would do. Probably. You know me.

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I don't think your shell is a fossil. It's material looks modern, not decalcified at all. Although it's worn, that means little in a high-energy environment, and you said it came from a river. Also, if you google "white river" +arkansas +clam, you find a hit on a Corps of Engineers study from 1987 listing numerous species of molluscs from that river. I'd imagine it's one of those...

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Thanks for correcting my error. After looking at the photos more closely, I also can see that it is not a brachiopod.

Thanks,

Walt

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