Can you provide a clearer close-up image? And a close-up of the edges of the specimen.

Welcome to MyFossil. Fossils are easier to identify if you know the following — Where the fossil was found, both geographically (state, and specific locality)and stratigraphically (different organisms lived at different time periods; higher up in the  cliff = younger, lower down = older).  I am unfamiliar with Alabama fossils, so I’m attaching a…[Read more]

One more time = GENUS

That word should be <span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>genus</span>. Not sure where all that other stuff came from 🙂

The giant clam is the largest shelled mollusk living today, but squid and octopi are also mollusks, so the size prize goes to Architeuthis, a g<span class=” fw-n lh-22 fz-14 fc-obsidian”>enus of deep-ocean dwelling squid.  They can reach a size of 33 feet (roughly the size of a school bus) and weigh more than 400 pounds!</span>

The shells get buried in the mud and the shell often gets remineralized or altered. The mud hardens and often splits along bedding planes which have the fossilized shells in them.  I’ve attached a plate of drawings of some common brachipods.

It appears to be a lower jaw with two teeth. Without a scale bar it’s hard to say but my guess is horse or cow.

The m two pix remind me of a scallop shell, but the specimen appears very altered and calcified. Could be a mollusk.

Matt

Hi Paul,

Those are very nice mold/cast fossils of brachiopods, which superficially look like mollusks but belong to a different phylum. They have different symmetry and internal organs. Nice specimens!

Matt

It looks like a water-worn piece of fossiliferous limestone (?) — maybe pieces of crinoid stem in it

It looks more like a fragment of a geode.

Can you provide a more close-up picture showing the texture clearly?

I found a PDF of the paper and I think I was right about Pachydiscus — check for yourself.

I can’t download the paper, but the species listed includes <span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>Pachydiscus</span> which is my bet.

Try this journal article:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1306030

It looks like a river-worn quartz pebble.

It looks modern, because it looks mostly made of bone, with little of no mineralization.  If it was from a fossil fish, you might expect it to have more of the bone replaced with rock minerals like silicates.

I agree with the bullfish predentary bone from a modern fish. It is definitely NOT from a sea urchin. That must’ve been a good size fish!