Upper Cretaceous Foraminifera

Pictures are of foraminifera fossils from Starksville, Mississippi. Recovered from the Prairie Bluff Formation that contain fossils from the Upper Cretaceous Period. This first fossil might be an Anomalina sp. Images were photographed at 100x with a microscope thus need to be stacked but I am not quite ready to climb that incline.  My images do not show the divots and bumps that appear on the surface of some of these fossils.

I used A Preliminary Report of the Foraminifera of Tennessee by Joseph A. Cushman (1931) as an identification guide (plates 11 and 12).  It contains a number of specimens from the Upper Cretaceous.  Thanks to Herb for the material.  It is fossil rich!

This next fossil I cannot even guess at an identification.

This fossil might be a Globigerina sp.

Last fossil could be a Globigerinella sp.

Index Fossils of North America lists a number of Upper Cretaceous foraminifera that can be found in Mississippi: Palmula (6-14), Frondicularia (6-17), Kyphopyxa (6-18), Guttulina (7-1), Pseudopolymorphina (7-3), Gumbelitria (8-2), Gumbelina (8-1), Rentilabrella (8-4, 8-5), Bolivinoides (8-6), Pseudouvigerina (8-11), Siphogenerinoides (8-12), Buliminella (8-13), Neobulimina (8-16), Loxostoma (8-18), Lamarckina (9-2), Globigerina (11-1), and Globotruncana (11-9).

Devonian Spiny Snail Fossil

This image is of a partial fossil of a spiny Platyceras dumosum (Conrad, 1840) gastropod fossil. Found in Louisville, Kentucky USA in the Devonian Period Jeffersonville Limestone. My cousin found this to add to maybe the 2-3 others he has found in the last year or so. He has prepped this one a little bit since finding it but the spines on it are impressive. Quite the little porcupine of the sea.

This image is from the book Kentucky Fossil Shells - A Monograph of the Fossil Shells of the Silurian and Devonian Rocks of Kentucky by Henry Nettelroth (1835-1887), 1889, Frankfort,  Kentucky, Kentucky Geological Survey, Plate XXIII, Figure 1 of the Platyceras dumosum (Conrad, 1840).

Another picture of the specimen shown earlier but more on the intact spine side.

This image is from the book Kentucky Fossil Shells - A Monograph of the Fossil Shells of the Silurian and Devonian Rocks of Kentucky by Henry Nettelroth, 1889, Frankfort,  Kentucky, Kentucky Geological Survey, Plate XXIII, Figure 2 of the Platyceras dumosum (Conrad, 1840).

He also found a negative image at a different time of another Platyceras (Conrad, 1840) again from the Jeffersonville Limestone.

Eospirifer radiatus Brachiopod

This brachiopod was found in the Waldron Shale of Clark County Indiana. It is a Silurian Period brachiopod that appears to be an Eospirifer radiatus. I used the Fossils of Ohio book pages 230-231 to get this identification.  The  book describes it as being from the Niagaran Series which is synonymous with the Waldron Shale.  The brachiopod is not fully intact with one side partial broken off revealing solid shale and calcite crystals.  Its dimensions are 3.5 cm long and 3.3 cm wide.  The radial lines are fine and very tightly spaced.  The specimen needs to be cleaned of residual matrix.

WOW!  Check out this Estonian Museum specimen database of an Eospirifer: http://sarv.gi.ee/specimen.php?id=56117 Now this is an impressive museum collections database with a sweet interface.  They have 100 Kentucky specimens including three holotypes of a stromatoporoid and 98 Indiana specimens As of this writing the database has 142802 entries with 15060 images.

Different views of the same specimen found in Clark County, Indiana.

The bottom image is from page 231 of the Fossils of Ohio (Bulletin 70, Rodney M. Feldmann Editor, State of Ohio, Department of Natural Resources, Division of Geological Survey, Columbus Ohio 1986) figure 10-12 of specimen from Wenlock Limestone, Dudley, West Midlands, England.

Also check out the nice collection of Eospirifers at the Indiana State Museum on-line database.