On Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, I managed to get to my nearby site for more challenging rock splitting. On Wednesday, I found a second cephalon example of the lichid Acanthopyge contusa (see the update to my post here). Friday was a bust apart from the usual fauna, taking home only a few common proetid partials and a few unknowns that turned out to be nothing interesting when I got them under the microscope. Today (Saturday) seemed to make up for Friday's failure. These are the tools that come with me in my backpack. I added the small pry bar today. Some of these rocks are veritable boulders that run deep, and since they are already extremely tough material to break, nothing comes easy. Even when the material doesn't shatter uselessly along a diagonal across the bedding planes, smaller chunks like to split vertically rather than horizontally as the beds can be so thinly packed and dense. Finding the right rock usually comes down to certain external features, but even then those can be blank duds or simply sparsely fossiliferous coral zones. Before committing to any larger rock, I test the edges to see inside first. The tool most often used in my arsenal at this location is the hand sledge. When I say typical fauna, I mean the litany of fenestellate bryozoans, brachs, and trilobite partials. When I "test" the rock, these are the kinds of layers that usually show the most promise. I am tentatively going to label this Acanthopyge contusa, although I am not fully certain it might not be another Terataspis as they have similar pygidial morphology. In some aspects, it seems to resemble both, but the preservation is not the greatest on this specimen. Going with the more conservative estimate, that would make Acanthopyge example number three. Every split requires a careful scan so as not to miss something spectacular. I almost left it thinking it was a compromised brachiopod, but the notch on the bottom made me think it might be a hypostome. And, surely enough, it is a hypostome belonging to Terataspis grandis. Pictured on the right is the illustration by R.P. Whitfield (1897). That makes three examples of this rare lichid, although compared to those found by others and housed in museums, mine are all quite small. This example is barely 1 cm, while the one at the ROM is 7.5 cm. Still, a mini-monster is still a monster! Sunday update: Spent another five hours out back and I would say these two partial examples of Acanthopyge contusa were the star finds: Wednesday update: Another three hours as I steadily run out of viable rock. This is one specimen split between both halves of the rock. It is my fourth fragment of a Terataspis, specifically the genal spine. My tally now is two pygidia, a hypostome, and a genal. The likelihood of finding a complete one is along the same odds of winning the lottery, but how many trilobite collectors can lay claim to having even just a single fragment? I'll be off this weekend to my secret Ordovician location up north, so I hope to post my finds when I return.
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Kane Faucher
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February 2024
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