Notostraca?

[gieserguy]

Hey! I recently found this for sale, but I figured it would be good to get an ID and see what you all think before purchasing. 

It seems to be Notostraca, probably Lepidurus. 

I seller told me it’s from Yixian Formation (Jurassic), Liaoning, China. 

 

[oilshale]

Yep, Lepidurus seems right , but Yixian is Early Cretaceous, not Jurassic.

[gieserguy]

3 hours ago, oilshale said:

Yep, Lepidurus seems right , but Yixian is Early Cretaceous, not Jurassic.

Yeah, I thought it was Cretaceous too, but I was just putting it as he told me. Thanks for the help!

[Mark Kmiecik]

Everything from many online sellers is "Jurassic" because "Jurassic Park" sells merchandise and most of these fossils are intended for the (very) amateur collector market and those interested in trinkets and home decor as opposed to serious fossil collectors. Some will be purchased by professional paleontologists and serious collectors, but that's a small percentage of the buyers. 

[gieserguy]

12 hours ago, Mark Kmiecik said:

Everything from many online sellers is "Jurassic" because "Jurassic Park" sells merchandise and most of these fossils are intended for the (very) amateur collector market and those interested in trinkets and home decor as opposed to serious fossil collectors. Some will be purchased by professional paleontologists and serious collectors, but that's a small percentage of the buyers. 

I definitely agree with you on that one, and it makes my blood boil when I see sellers intentionally mislabel their items because it takes advantage of the people who don’t know any better. But in this case, I think it was just a bit of a misunderstanding because the formation is early Cretaceous. 

[Mark Kmiecik]

11 hours ago, gieserguy said:

I definitely agree with you on that one, and it makes my blood boil when I see sellers intentionally mislabel their items because it takes advantage of the people who don’t know any better. But in this case, I think it was just a bit of a misunderstanding because the formation is early Cretaceous. 

 

I agree. Too many sellers label their wares "Jurassic" for the simple reason that if they said "Cretaceous" the average person out there would have no clue what the seller was talking about. They equate the term Jurassic with everything that's fossilized. I have actually asked people I know to name three prehistoric eras when dinosaurs lived and just about everyone gets Jurassic, but hardly anyone knows one or two besides that. To most people everything older than 65 million years ago is simply just Jurassic.

[Sagebrush Steve]

11 hours ago, oilshale said:

Yep, Lepidurus seems right , but Yixian is Early Cretaceous, not Jurassic.

As I recall, back in the late 1990s the Yixian was thought to be Jurassic.  It was only after some additional work was done in the early 2000s that it was reclassified as Cretaceous.  I might be able to dig out some papers on the topic if anyone is interested.