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Brachiopoda
This is a large rock with several fossil examples. Featured here is a mold fossil of a brachiopod. I located at least four brachiopod fossils on this rock. The rock measures ~142 mm (5.6 in) long, ~125 mm (4.9 in) wide and ~48 mm(1.90 in) thick. The fossil example pictured measures ~7.5 mm (.29 in) long and ~6.11 mm (.24 in) wide. The fossils all date to the Devonian Period (416-359.2 million years ago). I believe the rock is sandstone.
Rocky bottom of man made lake. Pymatuning Lake. Andover, Ohio, USA
This fossil is one of three total I found on the rock. I am working on posting the others. The extreme close up pictures were taken with a Digital Blue QX5 USB microscope at 10x power.
Spotted on Jul 5, 2012
Submitted on Nov 19, 2012
6 Comments
wow amazing!!!
i like fossil :)
Added measurements. Found more fossils on the rock and will update later.
You're welcome :-)
Oh ok, that made a pretty good picture in my mind, thanks Phil :)
It is not dumb at all! Brachiopods are marine animals that have hard shells (also called valves) and are similar to bivalves (clams, oystsers, etc..). The difference between the two is bivalves are symmetrical in that the two halves are same size and shape but brachiopod halves are different in size and sometimes shape on each half. Brachiopods have upper and lower valves whereas bivalves are left and right.
Brachipods are in the phylum Brachipoda and bivalves are in the phylum Mollusca.
Might be a dumb question, but what is a brachiopod? I know I can probably google it, but I'll just let you explain first :)