Another Devonian fossil ID request

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  • #23036
    Nathan Newell
    Participant

    Here’s another weird fossil-looking thing I found by splitting open some shale in a Devonian formation around Wardensville, WV. This formation also had trilobites and crinoid stem segments, and I think there’s a couple of crinoid segments embedded in this fossil. But I have no idea what the leafy thing is. At least, it kind of looks like a leaf, but I don’t know if anything resembling leaves were around in shallow seas around the Devonian time. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

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    #23041
    Nathan Newell
    Participant

    Here’s a few more close-up pics.

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    #23044
    Evan Walsh
    Participant

    Looks like some kind of flatworm of sea cucumber

    #23098
    Asa Kaplan
    Participant

    This looks for all the world like a diagenetic oxidation halo around a bar-shaped fossil (crinoid pluricolumnal?), caused by bacterial activity after the death of the animal. Especially given the halos around the other fossils in the same rock.

    If this were the Hunsrück Slate, I would give more pause. But since soft-bodied preservation is unheard of anywhere else in the Devonian, and since Appalachia’s Devonian rocks are sufficiently well studied that we would know about instances of soft-bodied preservation, there is no good reason to consider the possibility here. Just a diagenetic halo.

    #23099
    Nathan Newell
    Participant

    @evan-walsh Yeah, maybe so! Thanks for the suggestions!

    #23100
    Nathan Newell
    Participant

    @asa-kaplan That sounds about right, I see this kind of weird halo stain all around this site. Thanks!

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