Limestone Fossil

[dahlgrendb]

Any ideas? Found in a limestone tile

[Scylla]

Your ruler and fossil both confuse me. Maybe a rudist? What other fossils are you finding in the tile, that might help narrow down the age range?

[Indy]

Baby Dinosaur !!

[Auspex]

It's a section through...something. Looks like shell material, but I can't resolve what the 2-D 'cat scan' slice might be through.

See whether your supplied knows where it was quarried.

[BobWill]

The ruler is used for architectural drawings. The space between 0 and 1 is an actual inch. On this size scale an inch on the drawing would be a foot on the project being drawn and the small divisions to the left of the zero are inches on the project divided into fourths using that scale. Other scales might use other lengths to represent a foot like fractions of an inch.

[Scylla]

Ok, I'm more confused now. Let me go get my morning coffee.

[dahlgrendb]

Scylla, Sorry about the odd ruler. BobWill is right, it is an architectural scale. Each increment is 1/2 inch, the entire length of the fossil is a little over 4 inches.

I've had this thing for several years, so I have no idea where the limestone was from. Other fossils seem to be little crescent shaped shells, nothing too recognizable.

I'm a complete newbie, so I had to look up rudist. But doesn't it look like the head of something? or is that just coincidental?

[Auspex]

...But doesn't it look like the head of something? or is that just coincidental?

I prefer the term "superficially suggestive".

The human brain is real good at assigning familiar characteristics to unfamiliar things.

[Indy]

A cross section of a fossil fragment illustrating internal structure.
Identification of such fragments can be a brain-buster ... especially
when the geological age and the locality where it originated is unknown.

Knowing the geological age and where it originated is important

because it helps us narrow the possibilities of what the fragment might

represent.

Yes, I see what reminds me of a skull ...
Of course, skull comes to mind only because I can't
associate the cross section fragment with a specific fossil.

[Scylla]

Often the other fossils will give us a clue as to age. If we see ammonites, we can say it is older than 65 million years old for example. Limestone almost exclusively has marine fossils. Also show us the back of the tile, a different section might help.