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Trent River Formation, Mysterious Scale Pattern?


poppinfizz

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From my multiple trips to Trent River on Vancouver Island, I've come across a few of these and am never sure what they are, so I bring them home to one day find out. This would be Cretaceous and part of the Nanaimo group and are often found in concretions in the shale walls, or loose on the ground. This one in particular was pulled out of the shale wall and cracked open, splitting the specimen in two pieces. I look at it and see a sort of scale like pattern with little round indents on the negative part of the specimen. I really have no clue what this could be, so any help is appreciated!

the photos:

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keep in mind the actual fossil is about 2 cm

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Looks like part of a crab to me... the claw part. I don't know enough to tell you which crab but no doubt someone will be along soon to narrow it down.

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looks like a claw segment to me also, and welcome.

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"_ Carl Sagen

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" I think, therefore I collect fossils." _ Me

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."__S. Holmes

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It's a part of a callianassid (ghost shrimp) claw. The most common species in the Haslam (which is extensively exposed on the Trent) is Calliax whiteavesii (formerly Callianasa whiteavesii). However there are also other genera of callianassids in the Haslam and in the Pender Formation (also exposed on the Trent) and your specimens are not complete enough for a firm diagnosis.

I envy your ability to collect there. I lived in Vancouver back in the mid-late 1980s and have very fond recollections of collecting around Nanaimo and Courtney, at Shelter Point, and on Denman and Hornby Islands.

Don

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Thanks Don, It's Calliax now? I don't know how you keep track of all the changing names...

btw it's Courtenay

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