A rock found me

[EscarpmentMary]

My top soil is very rocky. When I'm working in my garden I remove the rocks that surface over time, sometimes I toss them in a bucket, sometimes curiosity overcomes me and I bring them into my kitchen sink, this rock below is one such such curiosity. Now I have the Fossil Forum! I was wandering through your Collections, crustaceans and there was something familiar about the photo of the Pulatius Vugaris. Further research on the web led me to following article,  A new mid-Silurian aquatic scorpion-one step closer to land? January 1 2015 Janet Waddington, David M Ruskin and Jason A. Dunlop The article explains the fossil was found by workers who had purchased the shale from a local quarry. They were doing a landscape project.The authors wrote “We postulate that these animals were aquatic but occasionally ventured into extremely shallow water or into a transient sub aerially exposed surface while moulting before returning to deeper water” They named this new species Eramoscorpius Brucenis (named after the Bruce Peninsula ). The rock is now soaking in vinegar. I’m planning to remove more matrix, and possibly removing the shells and seeing if I can piece this together? Not sure if this is do able. So I’m asking for any advice available, any thoughts?

[fossil_sea_urchin]

Something cool might happen, or possibly the vinegar will damage it.

[connorp]

The pictures are way too small to see anything. But I can tell you that vinegar will destroy any fossil if there is one. Very few fossils are undamaged by acids.

[EscarpmentMary]

Ok I will take it out now, I find it softens up the limestone, but I do worry about that.

[connorp]

1 hour ago, EscarpmentMary said:

Ok I will take it out now, I find it softens up the limestone, but I do worry about that.

Well it does, but from what I can glean from the pictures, the fossils (if there are any) are preserved in limestone too and thus the vinegar will destroy them as well.

[Ludwigia]

You really need to post some photos with a much larger format in order for us to make any judgements on this sample.

[EscarpmentMary]

I have spent the last few days cleaning and doing a bit of research. The first photograph is the rock with out any magnification, at the end of the blue headed pin is a shell of a scorpion. The silver head pin indicates the best example of a scorpion. I believe it is a scorpion for the following reasons. It fits in the 430 million year time period, secondly the segmented tail, I count  four, one is missing, the segmented leg, there are more in other places and the mesoma, the central body. I have no idea if the body itself is dorsal or ventral. Working on this this piece is akin to a train wreck. There are pieces everywhere, which again indicates to me this was because of a large trauma, again maybe a epic tidal movement. I measured this to be 30-35 mm long, the mesoma is 10-15 mm wide. It seems to be well preserved by the sedimentary mat which occurred immediately after. Again the wonder moment, could there be a spiracle booklung in the mesoma, which would allow the scorpion to take those early steps onto land? Also noteworthy is the future Devonian scorpion Praearcturus Gigi’s, (approx. 1 m long) 

[Ludwigia]

I've followed your description very closely, but for the life of me cannot see anything which would obviously resemble even parts of a sea scorpion. I am however seeing some brachiopod detritus.

[EscarpmentMary]

Ok 

[Pemphix]

Definitely no scorpion imho.

Just some Brachiopods and a lot of burrows.

Compared with the initial photos (way too small for any details) it seems there was more invertebrate fossil debris (no scorpion..), which may get lost by the acid.

Hashplates like this with bryozoan, corals, brachiopods etc. are pretty common in such environments....     

[EscarpmentMary]

Thank you, nothing lost, I knew nothing about scorpions last week:)

[FossilNerd]

21 hours ago, EscarpmentMary said:

Thank you, nothing lost, I knew nothing about scorpions last week:)

Keep up the positive attitude! There is so much to learn when it comes to fossils. It’s half (or more) of the fun! 
 

You may not have found a fossil of a scorpion, but you learned a lot about them, and you will know what features to look for when/if you do find one in the future.  

[EscarpmentMary]

Thank you, I am having fun! So glad I found the fossil forum!