Ordovician Trilobite Partially Exposed Thorax

Here is part of an exposed thorax or back of a trilobite. Probably a Flexicalymene meeki since it was found in Ordovician rock at the Bardstown Road cut in June 2008.

One day, if I have the equipment I will try and extract more of the fossil from this rock.

I find that it is a good idea to pick up some rocks that have lots of fossil fragments in them to analyze later. One after cleaning something shows up you did not see in the field and two a recent speaker at a KYANA Geological Society meeting said it is good to have multiple fossils together to help date the fossil.

Ordovician Trilobite Pygidiums

Here are some Ordovician trilobite pygidiums (or tails) found at the Bardstown Road cut outside of Louisville, Kentucky. They were found in June 2008 during about a 90 minute search.

They are small less than a centimeter across.

I would guess they belonged to Flexicalymene meeki which seemed to be popular in this rock layer.

Ordovician Cephalopod

Here is the fossilized remains of an Ordovician cephalopod about 7 cm long. It was found in June 2008 at the Bardstown Road cut, outside of Louisville, Kentucky.


It is not in the best of shape. By the looks of it once the creature died its shell was exposed on a sea bottom for a while and was worn a bit by the environment.


The milestone of this piece is that I counted 20 segments on it and that is the most I ever found on a cephalopod fossil.

Identifying this cephalopod could be a problem since it is a mold and does not have siphuncle showing. Looking at a 1955 Ohio Fossils book it refers to the species Endoceras proteiforme or Orthoceras dyeri as common Ohio Ordovician cephalopods. I do not think those genus names are used anymore though.


The Ohio Fossils book from 1996, it says that Cameroceras inaequabile (Miller) used to be identified as Endoceras and is most commonly found in Ordovician rocks in Ohio. In the next paragraph, it said that Treptoceras is the most common cephalopod found in Ohio Ordovician rock.

So maybe this specimen was one of those species.