Adam's Ordovician.

[Bobby Rico]

On 11/30/2022 at 6:40 PM, Tidgy's Dad said:

For my birthday wifey gave me this Ogygiocarella debuchii

I missed this sorry  . It quite lovely  gift.  

[Tidgy's Dad]

10 hours ago, Bobby Rico said:

I missed this sorry  . It quite lovely  gift.  

Never a need for you to apologise to me, old chap, It's very hard to keep up with all the posts from ones friends. 

I miss a lot as well. 

Yes, Tidgy's Mum, aka wifey, is quite a lovely lady, as is Mrs. R. 

[Tidgy's Dad]

As a part of last month was my birthday, wifey again came up trumps with another nice Ordovician piece for my collection.

This is from the Uppermost Llanvirn Series, Landeilian Stage, Meadowtown Beds of Betton Wood in Shropshire. 

A nice brachiopod assemblage in adinolised shale. 

Lots of lingulids; one larger Lingulella displosa,  near the bottom of the photo, and a bunch of smaller Monobolina plumbea. 

Here is a close up of the 'big' 9 mm long Lingulella displosa. 

I also have Lingulella davisii from the Cambrian, see halfway down the first page of: 

http://www.thefossilforum.com/topic/78887-adams-cambrian/?tab=comments#comment-832018

Tarquin @TqB has a wonderful hash full of these Cambrian ones, now you can see why I was searching for Lingulella, old chap! 

 

Edited October 7, 2023 by Tidgy's Dad

[TqB]

3 hours ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

As a part of last month was my birthday, wifey again came up trumps with another nice Ordovician piece for my collection.

This is from the Uppermost Llanvirn Series, Landeilian Stage, Meadowtown Beds of Betton Wood in Shropshire. 

A nice brachiopod assemblage in adinolised shale. 

Lots of lingulids; one larger Lingulella displosa,  near the bottom of the photo, and a bunch of smaller Monobolina plumbea. 

 

Here is a close up of the 'big' 9 mm long Lingulella displosa. 

 

I also have Lingulella davisii from the Cambrian, see halfway down the first page of: 

http://www.thefossilforum.com/topic/78887-adams-cambrian/?tab=comments#comment-832018

Tarquin @TqB has a wonderful hash full of these Cambrian ones, now you can see why I was searching for Lingulella, old chap! 

 

A fine birthday present! I love linguliform brachiopods and they're always exciting to find.

[Tidgy's Dad]

On 10/7/2023 at 6:49 AM, TqB said:

A fine birthday present! I love linguliform brachiopods and they're always exciting to find.

I agree.

I think it amazing that the discinids and lingulids as well as the craniids have survived so long virtually unchanged. They all found ecological niches with little competition and few predators and had no great need to change, it seems.

Anyway, I think I found a couple more Limgulella displosa in that Betton Wood piece. This first one is 4 mm long.

And the second one. 3 mm long.

I'll post the Monobolina next on this thread.

[Tidgy's Dad]

Here are some of the Monobolina plumbea from the rock above.

Monobolina is another linguloid but belongs to the family Elkaniidae rather than the Obolidae to which Lingulella belongs.

The biggest specimen is only 4 mm in diameter, some are considerably smaller and there are lots of fragments.

Note that the specimen on the left shows very fine striae, quite unusual for lingulids. A couple of close-ups:

The biggest specimen:

Some of the tiddlers:

 

And this thread has now passed 40,000 views!

Thank so much to everybody who has popped in and I hope that some of you have enjoyed it or found it useful and informative.

Edited October 29, 2023 by Tidgy's Dad

[Tidgy's Dad]

The Meadowtown Beds also contain trilobites and I think my birthday rock has some trilobits in it.

No idea which ones, or even if they are trilobits, all very tiny.

The first couple are thorax segments, I think.

The rest....

Manganese dendrites, I think.

Edited November 5, 2023 by Tidgy's Dad

[Tidgy's Dad]

Ralph @Nimravishas been a massive contributor to my Ordovician collection and here's another couple that he sent me recently for which I am enormously grateful.

From Bedford, Trimble County, Kentucky which will be Late Ordovician, Maysvillian, and I'm guessing the McMillan Formation. 

First up, Hebertella occidentalis.

This was a very successful and widespread species that I have from several different localities, formations and states but this locality and formation are new.

[FossilNerd]

Nice Hebertella Adam!

 

I have some from that formation, but not the location. 

Edited January 3 by FossilNerd

[Tidgy's Dad]

On 1/3/2024 at 2:37 AM, FossilNerd said:

Nice Hebertella Adam!

Thanks, Wayne.

The other classic Late Ordovician brachiopods I now have from the McMillan Formation of Bedford, Kentucky are a pair of Vinlandostrophia ponderosa, another species I have from several other locations and formations.

Here's the larger of the two. Some of the pictures are from before a bit of light pin prepping and some are from after:

 

Edited January 5 by Tidgy's Dad

[Tidgy's Dad]

Here is the second Vinlandostrophia ponderosa.

[Tidgy's Dad]

On the Vinlandostrophia above are lots of Cornulites sp. I haven't had so many cornulitids on a single brachiopod before, there are a dozen or more. And while they are usually on one valve with their openings toward the anterior, these face in both directions and on both valves.

And a bryozoan.

 

 

 

 

[Tidgy's Dad]

Well, I'm going to put this one here as the label says Ordovician, but I don't think it is.

It should read Tryplasma and I do have T. loveni from the British Silurian Much Wenlock Shale Formation, but it doesn't look much like this. Maybe a bit.

The genus  Tryplasma does occur from the Mid Ordovician to the Early Devonian, so it could be Ordovician, though I don't know of any Moroccan deposits where horn corals are preserved like this from those strata. Likewise Silurian stuff. Maybe Lower Devonian from the Mud Mounds? Preservation would match and there is a Tryplasma enorme recorded from there.

I posted this in Fossil ID and had some helpful replies but it remains a mystery.

Anyone who ever reads this post in the future, please post if you recognize it or have an idea. Cheers!

 

 

[Tidgy's Dad]

Magnanimous Mike @minnbuckeye has kindly sent me some more specimens from the Decorah Shale Formation from Decorah, Iowa.

I've been missing the many wondrous and beautiful, free-from-matrix bryozoans so far in my Devonian collection, so it's nice to dip back into the Ordovician and enjoy this beautiful specimen of Prasopora conoidea.

A couple of bits of other bryozoa stuck to the underside. The one on the right could be Graptodictya, but there's not enough of it to be certain.

It's also quite nice to compare and contrast it with the Decorah Prasopora simulatrix which is more domed than conical:

See the top of page 9 of this thread for more photos of P. simulatrix from the Decorah Shale and two-thirds of the way down page 27 for P. simulatrix from the Verulam Formation of the James Dick Cement Quarry in Ontario, Canada.

 

 

Edited February 2 by Tidgy's Dad

[minnbuckeye]

Very informative! I did not realize there were 3 species of Prasapora in the Decorah.

[Tidgy's Dad]

On 2/1/2024 at 1:05 PM, minnbuckeye said:

Very informative! I did not realize there were 3 species of Prasapora in the Decorah.

Thank you.

Yes, I think there are several species, especially near the top of the formation, but I need to do more reading.

Here is the wonderful obolid lingulid Pachyglossella elderi  ( was Lingula elderi).

I think it interesting that Lingula is "little tongue" in Latin, from "lingua" -"the tongue" which can mean the body part or the language and is the root of words such as linguistics, language, etc, while glossa is the Greek for the same thing and gives us the word glossary, for example. So Pachyglossella means "thick little tongue". Pachyglossa was already taken by a modern plant.

My first inarticulate brachiopod from the Decorah shale and my first specimen from its subfamily; Glossellinae.

[Tidgy's Dad]

This is a lovely chunk of the nautiloid  Endoceras proteiforme also from the Decorah Shale in Iowa.

The shell itself is gone so this specimen is composed of the internal casts of the individual camerae and as the septa are gone, the specimen likes to fall apart. It had been reglued a couple of times by Mike and then I had to glue a couple of bits back on after it had been through the postal service, but no real harm was done. 

I think the siphuncle in the picture below? Ventral from the centre but not at the margin would fit.

@minnbuckeye

Mike, thank you so much once again for expanding my Decorah Shale and Ordovician of the USA collection, it is very much appreciated. 

[Kane]

Nice! 

 

It is also our giant here in Ontario. I have seen 2 metre long examples on a few occasions. 

[minnbuckeye]

@Kane, would have to mortgage the house to send Adam most of my cephalopods! A fellow collector found one 5 miles from my home and he stors it behind his couch , with both ends protruding past the couch.

[Kane]

15 minutes ago, minnbuckeye said:

@Kane, would have to mortgage the house to send Adam most of my cephalopods! A fellow collector found one 5 miles from my home and he stors it behind his couch , with both ends protruding past the couch.

I know someone who tried to fit it in his car trunk. When I encounter them, they are "leaverite"!  

[Tidgy's Dad]

On 2/8/2024 at 7:05 PM, Kane said:

Nice! 

 

It is also our giant here in Ontario. I have seen 2 metre long examples on a few occasions. 

Yes, and add the living chamber, head, tentacles, and stuff, and they would have been quite impressive-looking critters!

 

[Tidgy's Dad]

On 2/8/2024 at 8:19 PM, minnbuckeye said:

@Kane, would have to mortgage the house to send Adam most of my cephalopods! A fellow collector found one 5 miles from my home and he stors it behind his couch , with both ends protruding past the couch.

I know of an excellent mortgage broker.

[FossilNerd]

On 1/11/2024 at 9:44 PM, Tidgy's Dad said:

On the Vinlandostrophia above are lots of Cornulites sp.

Good catch! I would never have spotted those little guys!  Very interesting how there are so many, on both valves, facing multiple directions.

[Tidgy's Dad]

On 2/15/2024 at 2:32 AM, FossilNerd said:

Good catch! I would never have spotted those little guys!  Very interesting how there are so many, on both valves, facing multiple directions.

I scan every rock and fossil with a magnifying glass, loupe and microscope! I can't see much even with my glasses on!

I wonder if the Cornulites grew on the valves post-mortem with the brachiopod rolling over and its orientation in relation to the prevailing current changing.

Cheers, Wayne.