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Fossil of a clam ON an oyster?


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What would you call this? Does it count as a fossil if it's not in sediment? Saw this on eBay advertised as "One in a Billion Ultra Rare Find: Clam Shell Fossil Imprint on an Oyster Shell" 

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Welcome to the forum. :)

 

Associations like these are not unheard of, so I certainly would think a claim of "one in a billion" may be a bit of hyperbole ;)

 

Fossils do not have to appear in matrix to be fossils, as some do weather out whole from the matrix. 

...How to Philosophize with a Hammer

 

 

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Fossils often occur on top of each other because layers of sediment are usually compacted. In addition, oysters like to bind to other organisms while they are alive to anchor themselves.

“...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin

Happy hunting,

Mason

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Great! Can you point me to an example, preferably a photo? Also, does it count as a fossil or is it called something else?

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One in a billion if you count all the bacteria too. Otherwise finding other shells attatched to oysters is common.

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You can Google "oyster fossil association" and get a few pictures there. And, yes, it does count as a fossil. :)

 

...How to Philosophize with a Hammer

 

 

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heres an example I found, in a little bit older deposits probably, of a few shells compacted together, they are the circles on the larger one (this pic is from a thread when I asked for an I'd, that's why there is a sketch next to it). Yours is still a fossil btw.

 

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There are millions of shell like yours and you got one, so he's not really wrong.

“...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin

Happy hunting,

Mason

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The technical term is epibiont, and there are those in palaeontology who specialize in that area. I've read some very interesting papers on brachiopod epibionts as sometimes they can help better fine tune stratigraphic information as index fossils where the host species may straddle a wider range of formations.

...How to Philosophize with a Hammer

 

 

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Most sellers will try to drum up interest in sales by using sensational adjectives - "One in a Billion", "Ultra Rare", "Pristine", "Super", "Amazing ", "Incredible"! 

Remember  - they are trying to make money, - and many sellers on auction sites have no knowledge about fossils.

Buyer beware! ;) 

    Tim    VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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It's fairly common in Denmark at least

 

The oyster attached itself to a shell, sponge or something else and grew. 

 

Later on the oyster was preserved and whatever it was attached to was not, ...  leaving an impression like the one on the picture

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Here are some examples of oysters attached to clams:

 

1.thumb.jpg.5932cefe0b743675836d571cd77c0725.jpg

 

Funny is when they are attached to objects. :)

2.thumb.jpg.b696b8c6f115490806a4df7fd2c2e471.jpg

 

Excerpts from Kellogg, James L. 1910. Shell-Fish Industries. American nature series, group IV. Working with Nature.

 

" We are not separate and independent entities, but like links in a chain, and we could not by any means be what we are without those who went before us and showed us the way. "

Thomas Mann

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they are quiet common.

 

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

No trees were killed in this posting......however, many innocent electrons were diverted from where they originally intended to go.

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

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They are called xenomorphs ("other forms"). Quite common in some places. But doing a Google image search is difficult because the word has also come to mean "alien..."

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