ARMOURED WORM

A wonderful example of the “armoured” worm, Lepidocoleus sarlei, from Middle Silurian outcrops in the Rochester Shale Formation, Middleport, New York, USA. The Rochester Shales are known for their wonderful diversity of marine fossil specimens, especially our beloved invertebrates. I picture them living in their various layers, like an extensive, suspension-feeding apartment block with each group making a living and feeding across these beautifully diverse stratified communities.

There are lovely brachiopods, including the spiriferids Striipirifer and Eospirifer, the strophomenids Leptaena, Coolinia and Amphistrophia. We also see the orthids represented by Mendacella (formerly Dalejina) and Resserella.

They shales also house a stunning assortment of our echinoderm friends with their radial symmetry. We see cystoids, crinoids, asterozoans and edrioasteroids. The diversity of the crinoids is especially spectacular. We see the camerates Macrostylocrinus, Dimerocrinites, Saccocrinus and Eucalyptocrinites. Cladids are represented by the elegant and long-stemmed Dendrocrinus, with his lengthy anal sac and branched, non-pinnulate arms. Disparids occur as the wee Homocrinus, recumbent calceocrinids (Calceocrinus) and the coiled, Crinobrachiatus with his coiled bilateral symmetry.

We also see the flexible crinoids represented by Asaphocrinus, Icthyocrinus and Lecanocrinus. Gracing many of the beds is the rhombiferan cystoid Caryocrinites scattered in bits and pieces and on rarer occasions  fully intact, sometimes with rooted specimens associated with bryozoan thickets. The edrioasteroid Hemicystites occurs in select layers referred to as the Homocrinus Beds. These beds record a history from when the area that is now New York State was located south of the equator and covered by an ancient shallow sea.

The Lewiston Member of the Rochester Shale were first studied by James Hall in the 1850-60's. Many great paleontologists have contributed to our understanding of their place in geologic and paleontological history, including Eugene Ringueberg's work from 1884-88; Frank Springer's studies from 1914-22 and Carlton E. Brett (along with his students, Denis Tetreault, James Eckert and Wendy Taylor) in the 1970-90's.

While the site became famous back in the 1820s, it is because of these latter paleontologists that I came to know about the site and appreciate the full breadth of fauna. Collection of Felix Collantes. If you are interested in the diversity of fauna from this area, I highly recommend the 1999 publication by Taylor and Brett referenced below. It's a definitive work.

Reference:  Taylor and Brett 1999: Middle Silurian Rochester Shale of Western New York, USA, and Southern Ontario, Canada

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PEMBROKESHIRE PUFFINS

This lovely fellow with his distinctive colouring is an Atlantic Puffin or "Sea Parrot" from Skomer Island near Pembrokeshire in the southwest of Wales. Wales is bordered by Camarthenshire to the east and Ceredigion to the northeast with the sea bordering everything else. It is a fine place to do some birding if it's seabirds you are interested in.

These Atlantic Puffins are one of the most famous of all the seabirds and form the largest colony in Southern Britain. They live about 25 years making a living in our cold seas dining on herring, hake and sand eels. Some have been known to live to almost 40 years of age. They are good little swimmers as you might expect, but surprisingly they are great flyers, too! They are hindered by short wings, which makes flight challenging but still possible with effort. Once they get some speed on board, they can fly up to 88 km an hour.

Their sexy orange beaks (dead sexy, right?) shift from a dull grey to bright orange when it is time to attract a mate. While not strictly monogamous, most Puffins choose the same mate year upon year producing adorable chicks or pufflings (awe) from their mating efforts. Female Puffins produce one single white egg which the parents take turns to incubate over a course of about six weeks. Their dutiful parents share the honour of feeding the wee pufflings five to eight times a day until the chick is ready to fly. Towards the end of July, the fledgling Puffins begin to venture from the safety of their parents and dry land. Once they take to the seas, mom and dad are released from duty and the newest members of the colony are left to hunt and survive on their own.

PLEISTOCENE BEARS

Fossil remains of Agriotherium, the short-faced giant bear, have been found in Collepardo, Italy. A fragment of a mandible was unearthed back in 2015 in the province of Frosinone. Thanks to several years of research and a recent CT scan, the team from Sapienza University of Rome were finally ready to publish.

Agriotherium is one of the largest of the mighty carnivores that lived in Europe back in the Pleistocene. They weighed as much as 900 kilos (almost 2,000 lbs) and grew up to 2.5 meters tall. These ancient bears roamed prehistoric Italy amid a humid and temperate climate, competing for food resources with some of our ancestors as they only becoming extinct 2.6 million years ago.

PERFECTION & COHABITATION: ANAHOPLITES PLANUS

A beautiful specimen of the ammonite, Anahoplites planus (Mantell, 1822) from Albian deposits in Courcelles-sur-Voire, Aube, north-central France. Anahoplites (Sowerby, 1815) is a genus of compressed hoplitid ammonites with flat sides, narrow, flat or grooved venters, and flexious ribs or striae arising from weak umbilical tubercles that end in fine dense ventrolateral nodes.

Anahoplites is now included in the subfamily Anahoplitinae and separated from the Hoplitinae where it was placed in the older in the 1957 edition of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Part L (Ammonoidea). Genera of the Hoplitinae tend to be more robust, with broader whorls and stronger ribs.

Anahoplites is found in Cretaceous (Middle to the late Albian) deposits from England, through Europe, all the way to the Transcaspian Oblast region in Russia to the east of the Caspian Sea. The Aube department, named after the local river, is the type locality of the Albian stage (d'ORBIGNY, 1842). Two formations are recognised in the clay facies (the "Gault" auct.) of the stratotype, the Argiles tégulines de Courcelles (82 m), overlain by the Marnes de Brienne (43 m). The boundary between the two formations is well-defined at the top of an indurated bed and readily identifiable in the field.

This involute (113 mm) specimen shows evidence of cohabitation by some of his marine peers. We see two different bryozoa, an oyster and some serpulids making a living and leaving trace fossils on his flat sides. This specimen was prepared with potase by José Juárez Ruiz of Spain.