Trilobite at Louisville Science Center - Elrathia kingii?

Here are a series of pictures taken of an imprint(?) of trilobite in the hands on activities in the Discovery Gallery of the Louisville Science Center. This trilobite does not look like anything I have found in the Louisville, Kentucky or southern Indiana area. Also I first thought the blackish rock was some sort of coal but after examining it seems pretty hard. The last picture shows the cut marks of probably a diamond circular saw blade.

Since it was an unknown trilobite to me I consulted the BEST trilobite fossil site on the internet Sam Gon III's http://www.trilobites.info/. It appears to me after looking at his drawings and images on the site, this speciment might be an Elrathia kingii. Specifically, the site lists it as Order: Ptychopariida, Suborder: Ptychopariina, Superfamily: Ptychoparioides, Family: Ptychopariidae. The site has a picture gallery with references to pictures on another site http://www.trilobite.com/ which sells Elrathia kingii trilobites that lived during the Middle Cambian in Utah. Also I believe it or another site noted that this trilobite is the most common one sold today that is intact.



Click on pictures to view larger version.



Part of the pygidium is missing. I count 12 thorax segments.

Bottom of plate that contains the trilobite. Rock is almost black to very dark gray in color.

Side of rock plate containing trilobite with maybe diamond blade cut marks. This specimen could have been part of a large group and was sold as an individual piece. If I had to guess, the trilobite size is about 3 cm long and 2 cm wide.

Blue Brachiopods Shell Fragments from Lake Cumberland, Kentucky

Here are some fragments of brachiopod shells from the Mississippian period. They are from the Lake Cumberland, Kentucky region. Mixed in with crionoid fragments they are part of the Fort Payne formation.

The shells are not quite as worn as ones from earlier posts.

Ordovician Snail: Paupospira bowdeni

Reading from the book A Sea without Fish, I discovered this snail is now known by a new name and also its location is pretty famous and unique. This gastropod (snail) was called Loxoplocus bowdeni but is now known as Paupospira bowdeni (page 125). It was found in Trimble County, Kentucky, USA in the Marble Hill Bed (Rowland Member of the Drakes Formation which is equivalent to the top of the Waynesville Formation). This information was documented by W.C. Swadley in 1979 in a paper entitled "The Marble Hill Bed: An Offshore Bar-Tidal Channel Complex in the Upper Ordovician Drakes Formation of Kentucky" in United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 1126-D. I cannot find the paper on JSTOR, it is listed as a reference to several papers I found.

The location described in the A Sea without Fish book, says the rock lenses with snails species: Paupospira bowdeni, Paupospira tropidophora (Meek), and Paupospira moorei (Ulrich) (page 127). I know what the first one looks like but the other two are somewhat of a mystery. They have a picture of Paupospira moorei on page 122 but it is covered by the tabulate coral Protaraea richmondensis.

The Marble Hill Bed seems to have been named by D.D. Owen in 1859 in a report entitled, "Report of a geological reconnaissance of the state of Indiana made in the year 1837 part 1" page 63. A document (Lithofacies of the Cincinnati Series) found here describes this location as a Gastropod Coquina. It also says that bryozoan and Hebertella brachiopod fragments could be found. I did find a nice brachiopod on the trip but I found a number of cephalopod fragments with the snails. This specimen was about 4 cm long but the papers say they get to be 5 cm in length at this location.