Placoderm

This is my second blog post today. I took the time to finally complete this placoderm I found in the Widder Formation back in April. I started it not long before I left for Bowmanville, and tidied it all up today. This is likely Protitanichthys sp. (cf. rockportensis), but more research needs to be done on these arthrodires.

This is an in situ photo of the arthrodire -- a completely discombobulated mess. To make matters more fun, it was situated in the iron-hard brachiopod layer, so the only choice for extraction was to use brute force and hopefully be able to collect all the pieces for reconstruction later. Apart from some of the bigger pieces, it is not entirely clear how this critter is oriented.

I had put it aside to deal with trilobite prep, but I knew at some point I'd have to do something with this so it wasn't just sitting and taking up space in the living room. I started assembling some of the bigger pieces; the smaller pieces were going to be a lot of trial and error -- a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle without the completed image on the box. There is a lot of matrix to remove as can be seen above. These are otherwise thick pieces of bone that made up the head and dorsal shield of this Devonian fish.

At this point, after about ten hours, I've taken to abrading all the little pieces as well (not all pictured here). The matrix was very easy to remove in parts, melting away under baking soda... But some of the matrix was sticky and as hard as iron. Scribing was not an option when the matrix is this close to the bone as there may be pustules hiding underneath that could easily be knocked off with a far too aggressive approach. Slow and steady is required. 

Jump ahead another ten hours and it is done. This is pretty much solid bone. It is also of substantial size for the Widder at about 20 cm from the tip to tip, and this is just the posterior median dorsal plate of the trunk shield (the complete placoderm would have been over three feet long). I've glued it down to a piece of black construction paper and will likely clean up around the edges before pasting it down to a harder backing. There are three small pieces orphaned that I can't find a place for, and there is sadly some missing pieces that must have been lost at the site -- but none too shabby under the circumstances of its forced extraction by necessity. I'm somewhat proud of this one.