Mississippian Period Trilobite Pygidium

Rare is a find than that of a trilobite fragment in the Mississippian Period (Lower Carboniferous - 359 to 318 million years ago) Fort Payne Formation of Lake Cumberland, Kentucky. This picture is of such a find that being a trilobite pygidium found in a gray rock shale with a lot of compressed Fenestella like bryozoan pieces.

This specimen is quite small and hard to get a detailed image of. It is about 1.5 cm wide. Looking at the article in the Journal of Paleontology, November 1966 entitled "Mississippian Trilobites from Northwestern Georgia" by Mark Rich of the University of Georgia in Athens, two trilobite genus are mentioned being in the Fort Payne Chert: Australosutra and Proetus.  I am not familiar with the Australosutra trilobite and do not see one in the Google Image database.  The Proetus trilobite has more of a bubble like hump in the middle lobe of the pygidium so it might not be that genus.  Next time I am on JSTOR I will try and look at that article and see if the images look anything like this one.

 

 

Phacops Trilobite Molts

This post shows some of the Phacops rana (Green, 1832) trilobite molts I have found over the last year. These fossilized remains were found in Clark County, Indiana or Jefferson County, Kentucky. While not museum grade finds and none are intact enrolled trilobites, they are still nice finds. The trilobite fossils most likely are from the Jeffersonville Limestone layer of the Devonian Period.  If you are a fossil collector in the United States of America, this trilobite is always nice to find.  Some of the best looking Phacops (Emmrich, 1839) trilobites are found in the Silica Shale in Ohio as opposed to these limestone fossils.

This trilobite is most interesting because of the lens of its compound eye.

Enrolled Phacops trilobite thorax pieces

 

Close up of two enrolled Phacops thorax pieces

 

Two fossils that need to have some matrix removed from the thorax segments

A selection of Phacops trilobite cephalon pieces

Close up of one of the cephalons

 

Tyrannosaurus rex Skull Replica

This Tyrannosaurus rex skull replica can be found at the Adventure Science Center in Nashville, Tennessee. A great science center for kids and if you are a science center and museum aimed at kids, it is a good idea to have some dinosaurs. The dinosaur exhibit is small and located on the second floor. Besides this replica they have some animatronics of three dinosaurs to look at. A little interactive quiz on which creatures are dinosaurs as well is included in the exhibit.

The T. rex was a dinosaur of the Cretaceous Period in its waning years (68-65 million years ago).

For adults, the most interesting part of the center is the astronomy section. The center has some really nice technology showing how the solar system works. Their educational display on the wavelengths of light is great.