Well eye will be darned.

[mikeymig]

When I was cleaning up scraps of shale from my prep floor today, I saw parts of trilobites on some of the pieces of shale. The rock was collected recently and a complete Eldredgeops was removed. This shale is Middle Devonian in age and is very hard (almost like limestone). Trilobites in this layer are well preserved and 3D. The trilo parts I found were the cephalon of a small Pseudodechenella, pygidium of a Greenops, and the eye of a Dipleura. I spotted the Dipleura as just a small piece of exoskeleton in the side of the shale. I knew it was a piece of Dipleura shell, and I knew it was just a piece, but I was curious. The fossil was lying on a crack in the shale that I easily split open with a small chisel. When the eye popped out of the matrix I thought it was pretty funny and said to my girlfriend "well i'll be darned".