Starting off the week with a bang, I had no fewer than three packages waiting for me when I got home. Two were purchases, and one was a gift from a dear Fossil Forum friend from the Netherlands. First up, a "gold bug": This phacopid is Metacanthina barrandei from the Couche Rouge, Maeder Region of Morocco. The trilobites in this layer are entirely replaced by chalcopyrite. In this case it is likely that the trilobite during preparation was painted or polished/buffed to appear in this fashion. It has two interesting features that distinguish this species: a tiny "spathe" at the end of the glabella (looks like it is sticking out its tongue) and a distinct occipital spike just below the cephalon. This one is not tiny, either, at about 90 mm tip to tip. Similar to the trilobite I featured first last week, this is of the same genus. I welcome Gerastos ainrasifus to my collection. Just like the other proetid, it is fairly small at around 30 mm. And now for the splendid gifts from my friend Pat overseas. This first is the classic, glabella-bulging Moroccan phacopid, Reedops sp. Some fabulous eye detail, yes, but that "shnozz" is something else! This one is a bit tough to make out until I hook up the digital scope, but this barely 5 mm wide cephalon belongs to the very rare Diacanthaspis (Acanthalomina) minuta, a Silurian Odontopleurid (my first!) from Lodenice, Czech Republic. It has the tuberculate cephalic markings somewhat similar to various species of Ceraurus, but is more closely related to various Lichid trilobites. And another lovely gift: the Ordovician asaphid Ogyiocaris dilatata. This was collected from the Oslo fjord area in Norway and are considered very rare. And this one, well, this Belgian trilobite has yet to be formally described! It comes from the Hotton area, Ardennes, Belgium. I am guessing a phacopid of some kind, and it looks like I might give some matrix removal a try to see if I can find more of it in there.
And apart from these lovely trilo-gifts, I also received a cool Roman coin from the reign of Constantine II (337-340 AD), and shrapnel from the battlefield of the very famous - and one of the bloodiest - Battle of the Somme, which took place between the British (+Canada!) and the French against the Germans, July to November 1916. These are two pieces of non-trilobite history I very much cherish. It's been a fantastic day indeed! Comments are closed.
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Kane Faucher
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February 2024
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