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Probably Latiproductus latissimus, Great Limestone, Mississippian, Pendleian Stage, Co. Durham, England. I've dissolved out a few silicified partial shells of this common large productid but these are the first attached spines I've come across so far. I can't find any literature where these have been figured before for this genus. Four are showing; there may well be more but the piece is very fragile and I'm stopping here! They only occur on the ventral (pedicle) valve, judging by the spine bases. The second photo is of a more complete ventral shell in the same piece, with typical spine bases. Scale in mm Usual preservation after acid extraction in this bed. (55mm across, quite small for the species.)

After a rubbish day at the bench trying to do something well above my pay-grade, I decided to take on some practice work that will help me in learning some intermediate level prep fundamentals, and expand my "prepertoire," so to speak. This is a ventral Flexicalymene senaria, a fairly common bug and certainly one I could sacrifice to learning. I started doing the prep to make it ventral, but it seems to have enough complete shell to warrant a flip. Problem is, I've never done a flip. Well, actually I have and it failed spectacularly. Something something stone meal? What kind of glue? Ratio? Levelling? Here is the piece in question. Now, I know I can trim off the right side of the rock to function as the base. Any step by step help on this would be enormously appreciated. I just know this is a skill I'm going to need to develop as the years (and ventrals) accumulate. I need to develop this skill on common bugs before I ever entertain doing so on a rare one.