Adam's Ordovician.

[Miocene_Mason]

Just now, Tidgy's Dad said:

One can imagine this little echinoderm community with the brittle stars foraging on the substrate and the eocrinoids filter feeding in the current a few inches above. 

Must’ve been beautiful!

[Bobby Rico]

4 hours ago, WhodamanHD said:

 

4 hours ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

 

Very nice indeed. really enjoying this thread thank you Adam 

[Tidgy's Dad]

A part of the present I received from my TFF Secret Santa.

Bumastoides sp.

Upper Ordovician, Road cutting near Postville, North East Iowa. 

Okay, it's a bit battered and the eyes are missing but i rather like this little bug. 

Length 2.8 cm

[indominus rex]

4 minutes ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

A part of the present I received from my TFF Secret Santa.

Bumastoides sp.

Upper Ordovician, Road cutting near Postville, North East Iowa. 

Okay, it's a bit battered and the eyes are missing but i rather like this little bug. 

Length 2.8 cm

That's a nice bug. I guess you are slowly expanding your Ordovician collection. What else are you hoping to add?

[Tidgy's Dad]

2 minutes ago, indominus rex said:

That's a nice bug. I guess you are slowly expanding your Ordovician collection. What else are you hoping to add?

I just love everything! 

I have a few more bugs to add and a nautiloid before I move on to my Silurian stuff. 

But the Ordovician species i would most like are the two that I had, but sold long ago when times were hard, so that would be the trilobite Ogygiocarella angustissimus (I had a large and very beautiful complete one, self-collected, so will be hard to replace) and a Platystrophia sp brachiopod, free from matrix from Richmond, Indiana that was a purchase, so i didn't mind selling that quite so much. That one should be easier (and cheaper) to replace, I think.  

 

[Bobby Rico]

Very nice trilobite Adam your collection is very interesting. Thank you

[indominus rex]

2 minutes ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

I just love everything! 

I have a few more bugs to add and a nautiloid before I move on to my Silurian stuff. 

But the Ordovician species i would most like are the two that I had, but sold long ago when times were hard, so that would be the trilobite Ogygiocarella angustissimus (I had a large and very beautiful complete one, self-collected, so will be hard to replace) and a Platystrophia sp brachiopod, free from matrix from Richmond, Indiana that was a purchase, so i didn't mind selling that quite so much. That one should be easier (and cheaper) to replace, I think.  

 

Oh that's sad that you had to sell the Ogygiocarella. Well maybe someday you will be able to find a new one. I have a few sponges and corals from the Ordovician, but now I have about 7 bugs. And soon I will be receiving a spiny trilobite, I will soon post it. And I would love to see the other trilobites you have.

[Tidgy's Dad]

16 minutes ago, indominus rex said:

Oh that's sad that you had to sell the Ogygiocarella. Well maybe someday you will be able to find a new one. I have a few sponges and corals from the Ordovician, but now I have about 7 bugs. And soon I will be receiving a spiny trilobite, I will soon post it. And I would love to see the other trilobites you have.

Your mention of corals reminded me! 

I still have several specimens from what used to be called the Ashgill (Upper Ordovician) from The Lake District in the UK to post here as well. 

So the Silurian is postponed! 

But first I have half a dozen trilos to post. 

[Tidgy's Dad]

First of which are these from the Middle Ordovician of the Anti Atlas, Near Zagora, Morocco. 

You see these for sale all over the country in varying quality, and they are available on all the well known auction sites and many other fossil retailers on the net too. Many of them come from a huge commercial quarry near Aachich n'Ait Azza, Rahiat. 

You will often see these incorrectly labelled as Calymene, Diacalymene, or Gravicalymene, but they actually all come from two other genera, Flexicalymene and Colpocoryphe.

There are a couple of noteworthy differences between the two, but the easiest to spot is the pygidium of Colpocoryphe smooth sides to the pygidium. 

So here are a couple of mine.

This first one is standard preservation, not great and as often happens broken in half during discovery and then fitted back together. The pygidium is partly covered in matrix but you can still make out the pygidium has raised ridges. So this is :  

Flexicalymene ouzregui. 

 

 

 

[Bobby Rico]

Thanks Adam that is very informative and now I will have look at some of mine for a ID check.

[Tidgy's Dad]

Next is from the same region and has smooth flanks on the pygidium. This is Colpocoryphe rouaulti. They are found in very similar preservation in other places such as Portugal. 

Both this and the above bug are about 6 cm (2 and a quarter inches?) long. 

 

 

[piranha]

The Moroccan species is: Colpocoryphe grandis

 

Destombes, Jacques (1966)
Quelques Calymenina (Trilobitae) de l'Ordovicien moyen et supérieur de l'Anti-Atlas (Maroc).
Notes et Mémoires du Service Géologique du Maroc, t.26, 188:33-52

[KimTexan]

There is this guy named Mike Phillips on the Facebook version of TFF that collects Rogosa coral with Beekite from the Ordovician around Nashville, Tennessee that is so pretty. This is one of his pics.

Thought you might like to see it.

[Tidgy's Dad]

1 hour ago, KimTexan said:

There is this guy named Mike Phillips on the Facebook version of TFF that collects Rogosa coral with Beekite from the Ordovician around Nashville, Tennessee that is so pretty. This is one of his pics.

Thought you might like to see it.

Indeed i would. 

They are most beautiful and would look rather good in Adam's Ordovician.

Though they now sort of are! 

[Tidgy's Dad]

There is another species of trilobite found commonly and seemingly reported from many sites of vastly varying supposed age from the Tremadoc to the Caradoc/Asgill boundary across the Anti Atlas region. Sorry if the ages are now not used any more but it's from the Upper part of the Early Ordovician, through the Middle Ordovician and perhaps to the Lower part of the Upper Ordovician. The ones I have are from Iffoun and are said to be from near the Caradoc/ Ashgill boundary about 448- 450 million years old. This trilobite is also Colpocoryphe but is not usually as covered in ochre and is much bigger than C.rouaulti The size is probably the reason for the name : Colpocoryphe grandis. This first specimen is about average and is 9.4 cm or over 3.5 inches long.

   

 

 

 

[Tidgy's Dad]

And C.grandis with an average size member of one of the other two species which are the same average size. 

 

 

[piranha]

Large trilobites are small before they are large.  Colpocoryphe rouaulti is not a valid species in Morocco. 

 

[doushantuo]

[Tidgy's Dad]

2 hours ago, piranha said:

Large trilobites are small before they are large.  Colpocoryphe rouaulti is not a valid species in Morocco. 

 

But it is found just over the Straits in the Iberian peninsula. In the same form of preservation, size and with the heavy ochre covering. C, roualti may not be valid over here yet, but that doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't occur here. There's a lot to be discovered and named here and these two types, the ochre covered ones are nearly always about that size and these darker ones from a different location nearly always about this size. Are you suggesting that only the one species, C.grandis occurs at all the different sites and across a fair part of the Ordovician? That there are no other species? That C.rouaulti which can be found in Portugal, France and Spain in this type of preservation and age isn't in Morocco? I just say it hasn't been officially described yet, like so many other things. 

Oh, and i know the continents were different places back then, but still. 

[piranha]

There are a couple of species described from Morocco, but unfortunately Colpocoryphe rouaulti is not on the list. 

 

Moroccan species:

Colpocoryphe aragoi

Colpocoryphe grandis

Colpocoryphe lennieri

Colpocoryphe thorali

[KimTexan]

1 hour ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

Indeed i would. 

They are most beautiful and would look rather good in Adam's Ordovician.

Though they now sort of are! 

Sorry about that. You mentioned Ordovician  corals and I thought of those lovely specimens. Didn’t mean to detract or distract from your collection. My apologies. 

[Tidgy's Dad]

56 minutes ago, piranha said:

There are a couple of species described from Morocco, but unfortunately Colpocoryphe rouaulti is not on the list. 

 

Moroccan species:

Colpocoryphe aragoi

Colpocoryphe grandis

Colpocoryphe lennieri

Colpocoryphe thorali

Ok, thank you. 

So, not just the one. 

Do you have papers on the others or their localities, please? 

[Tidgy's Dad]

41 minutes ago, KimTexan said:

Sorry about that. You mentioned Ordovician  corals and I thought of those lovely specimens. Didn’t mean to detract or distract from your collection. My apologies. 

No, not at all, they are genuinely superb, i'm very glad that you posted them, and it's always nice when people add to posts, i think. 

You're most welcome. 

[ynot]

I think they look nice regardless of what genus or species they are.

[Tidgy's Dad]

Colpocoryphe grandis is often found enrolled. 

This one is sort of half enrolled and a bit squished to one side. 

Using a tape measure along the middle of the body from the anterior of the cephalon to the posterior of the pygidium this one is about 10 cm long, and a little bit of it is hidden due to enrollment.