JohnJ Posted February 6, 2009 Share Posted February 6, 2009 The first time I saw a Salenia echinoid in Charles Finsley's, A Field Guide to Fossils of Texas, I thought it looked like an exotic, extra-terrestrial asteroid. They are just cool looking! I'd like to learn more about them, so I thought we could start a small project. Inspired by MB's request in my recent POST, the project's scope is simple: use this new post to build a photographic "database" of all 10 Salenia species that occur in Texas. Members could post clear pics (with some sort of size reference) of Salenias they have found in or acquired from Texas. Try to have the images display characteristics of the echies. We could learn a lot from multiple photos of the same species that come from different parts of the state. The more useful pics, the better. We have several echinoid experts and enthusiasts on the Forum that I hope will assist the rest of us out here further our knowledge. If we're not careful, we may all learn something... . For starters... Salenia leanderensis (Central Texas - Walnut Fm.) Salenia texana (Central Texas - Glen Rose Fm.) The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true. - JJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oh-Man Posted February 6, 2009 Share Posted February 6, 2009 I've only got five S. texana so I think you've got that one covered. O What is geology? "Rocks for Jocks!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnJ Posted February 6, 2009 Author Share Posted February 6, 2009 I've only got five S. texana so I think you've got that one covered.O Not really, O. If we could get 30 pics of Salenia texana from different sites, then we'd learn something about diversity in preservation, size, etc. More is better. 1 The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true. - JJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted February 6, 2009 Share Posted February 6, 2009 well, heck, wish you woulda asked for pictures of that big one before we messed it up by using it as a doorstop in our house for a coupla years. can't move it now because it's all sunk into the carpet from the weight. i'm thinkin' ya'll's relationships with some of these genera are unnatural. gonna start callin' ya "saleniacs" by the way, check this link for photos of invert fossils from a rare locality... yee AND haw! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CreekCrawler Posted February 6, 2009 Share Posted February 6, 2009 John J, invite me down there and you can add some more photos to your collection I need to find my first Salenia anyway!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Siphuncle Posted February 6, 2009 Share Posted February 6, 2009 Barry The closest Salenia I know of to you would probably be S. mexicana from the Goodland, Walnut, and Kiamichi fms. You may luck into them in the Grayson as well, but they are more rare there. The ones I'm most interested in come from the Upper Cretaceous Anacacho formation and go by the name S. hondoensis. I need to add a good-r-un or 10 to my collection. And Johnny, I'll be adding some photos to this thread this weekend. Grüße, Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas "To the motivated go the spoils." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LanceH Posted February 6, 2009 Share Posted February 6, 2009 Well here's two Salenia mexicana (?) from the exact same locality (behind an oil change shop) in the Goodland formation in Tarrant county, Texas . It's interesting that one is wearing a thick apical "beanie" and the other is very thin. Anyone know why? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnJ Posted February 7, 2009 Author Share Posted February 7, 2009 Those are nice, Lance. Finsley's description for S. mexicana describes the apical system as ornate - <check>, ambulacral tubercles wider apart than S. texana - <check>, and the peristome proportionately larger than S. texana - <check>. It seems like a good candidate for S. mexicana. on the other hand, the printout on tracer's Ambulacral Alert says the apical system of S. texana is similar to a 10-gallon hat and S. mexicana, an ornate sombrero.... your's fossilized on windy day when the beanie's edges rolled up. The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true. - JJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 yes, well - all seriousness aside. i started "researching" (always means i googled) echinoid anatomy and began studying an article i found that makes johnj's use of big words look like his vocabulary is huddled on a dime. anyway, i didn't understand any of it, but it got me to thinking, which is always hazardous. i started wondering if the "apical cap" on the "thick" one was just a bit too big for the echinoid's head (yes, i know it's the wrong end, but didn't want to get gross by saying "butt shield" or "aim us"). at any rate, i semi-concluded that perhaps the "apical cap" on the "thick" one was maybe just a bit higher off the surface of the test and material underneath it fossilized to make it thicker. this thinking jag wasn't that far removed from another thinking jag i had where i starting ruminating and cogitating on why so may crabs end up in nodules. i started wondering if the snarge inside a crab is full of cartilaginous, glutinous, ectoplasmic endogoop that chemically renoberates to bind with mud and silt and beform the gination of mudstone or sumpin. (diagenesis happens - somebody's got to deal with it - and crabbies gonna ball) i got pretty disappointed with myself for thinking all this weirdness, but then i realized that it briefly kept me from thinking about how the military/industrial complex is probably going to have to orchestrate ww3 to pull us out of the economic mire we've been put in by people who should have been out hunting fossils instead of things up. p.s. - i always thought a "peristome" was a book about life in that i fell tower place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Siphuncle Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 Salenia texana (the bigguns), Upper/Lower Glen Rose contact, South Texas Various micro Salenia, Upper Glen Rose fm, South Texas Grüße, Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas "To the motivated go the spoils." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Siphuncle Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 Salenia mexicana (?), Walnut fm, Central TX Grüße, Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas "To the motivated go the spoils." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Siphuncle Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 You ID this one - Boracho fm of West TX - Keith Minor said just another S. texana Grüße, Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas "To the motivated go the spoils." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Siphuncle Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 Salenia hondoensis, Anacacho fm, South Texas Grüße, Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas "To the motivated go the spoils." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Siphuncle Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 Salenia phillipsae, Upper Glen Rose fm, South TX Grüße, Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas "To the motivated go the spoils." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnJ Posted February 7, 2009 Author Share Posted February 7, 2009 Impressive.... I can't wait until Mike weighs in.... The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true. - JJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnJ Posted March 3, 2009 Author Share Posted March 3, 2009 I found this thread in the weeds and thought I'd mow the grass.... I also found a few Salenias on Saturday. However, since these are all from the same lower Cretaceous site, I've just learned from our Mike Murphy that these may now be referred to as Leptosalenia sp. Hopefully Mike, or others can offer further clarification. Anyway, I could probably say these were all Leptosalenia texana and not necessarily be challenged. While I really think that is true of the largest of the three, the two smaller may be different species. The smallest has 12 - 14 ambulacral tubercles total (6 - 7 per row). The middle sized one 24 - 26 total (12 - 13 per row). Any suggestions? Thanks. The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true. - JJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnJ Posted March 3, 2009 Author Share Posted March 3, 2009 Salenia phillipsae, Upper Glen Rose fm, South TX Dan, I have to challenge your ID on this echie (at my own risk). S. phillipsae is described as having 10 - 12 total ambulacral tubercles and this one seems to have close to 30. What do you think? The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true. - JJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Siphuncle Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 Let Mike sort it out......... Grüße, Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas "To the motivated go the spoils." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnJ Posted March 5, 2009 Author Share Posted March 5, 2009 I found this thread in the weeds and thought I'd mow the grass....I also found a few Salenias on Saturday. However, since these are all from the same lower Cretaceous site, I've just learned from our Mike Murphy that these may now be referred to as Leptosalenia sp. Hopefully Mike, or others can offer further clarification. Anyway, I could probably say these were all Leptosalenia texana and not necessarily be challenged. While I really think that is true of the largest of the three, the two smaller may be different species. The smallest has 12 - 14 ambulacral tubercles total (6 - 7 per row). The middle sized one 24 - 26 total (12 - 13 per row). Any suggestions? Thanks. more pics of the smallest one The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true. - JJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mommabetts Posted March 5, 2009 Share Posted March 5, 2009 Dan, I have always loved echs and your collection is just amazing. Very nice!!!!!!!!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frank Posted March 6, 2009 Share Posted March 6, 2009 OK, Here's the deal about Salenia vs. Leptosalenia. Andrew Smith, of the Natural History Museum in London, makes this distinction on his website, "The Echinoid Directory". The clearest difference is that Salenia has two rows of primary tubercles in the ambulacra, with smaller granules between the two rows (see pic). Leptosalenia has only the two rows of primary tubercles in the ambulacra, with nothing in between. This is pretty apparent in all of the pics that have been posted except for Dan's S. hondoensis, which shows an ambulacrum, but not very clearly. Smith places the three best-known Lower Cretaceous species, mexicana, texana and volana, in Leptosalenia. He retains hondoensis (Upper Cretaceous), and several Paleogene species, in Salenia. There is no question that mexicana, texana, and volana fit the description Smith gives for Leptosalenia as differentiated from Salenia. The main question about this assignment is whether the difference justifies two different genera (or some other taxonomic level) or not. Since I (and most other humans) don't know nearly as much about echinoid systematics as Smith does, I'm happy to accept his classification. Therefore, as I've told other echinoid fans in my area, I will refer to these three species as Leptosalenia whenever I can remember to. :-) I am not well-studied on the differences between the species of Leptosalenia, or species of Salenia, although I'm pretty sure some of them are bogus. I'll need to get ahold of original descriptions to get a better handle on that, something that I'm actually working on slowly but surely. Mike has examined the identifying characters on many more specimens than I have, so I would defer to his IDs. BTW, for anyone with an interest in echinoids, Andrew Smith's website is really superlative: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/pro...noid-directory/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NSRaddict_1 Posted March 7, 2009 Share Posted March 7, 2009 Wow nice specimens . Here are a few specimens we have , the brown one is Pyrite replacement . Hunting fossils is fun , but discovering is better ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LanceH Posted February 4, 2012 Share Posted February 4, 2012 OK, this thread has been quiet awhile but I ran across and figured I could add a new one. This is (I think) a "Leptosalenia volana" from the Weno Formation in north Texas. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimB88 Posted February 4, 2012 Share Posted February 4, 2012 thats a sweet little ecchi! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coco Posted February 5, 2012 Share Posted February 5, 2012 Hi, Nice sea urchins Coco ---------------------- OUTIL POUR MESURER VOS FOSSILES : ici Ma bibliothèque PDF 1 (Poissons et sélaciens récents & fossiles) : ici Ma bibliothèque PDF 2 (Animaux vivants - sans poissons ni sélaciens) : ici Mâchoires sélaciennes récentes : ici Hétérodontiques et sélaciens : ici Oeufs sélaciens récents : ici Otolithes de poissons récents ! ici Un Greg... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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