@matthew-gramling This is a weird one! The parallel lines toward the edges are throwing me. Maybe it is a coral or a bryozoan colony or something. This is one of those fossils that I’d like to chop in half with a rock saw and see what’s inside. 😀

Hi, @matthew-gramling! Yeah, I think you’re on the right track. To me, it looks a lot like Rafinesquina, or other related Strophomenidae like Colaptomena or Pionomena. Hopefully that helps to narrow things down for you!

@matthew-gramling@jbauer I think it has an Orthida shape to it too. The overall shape looks kind of similar to this specimen:
Specimen 60550

So, maybe a Rhipidomellidae or something close, like a Dalmanellidae. I think there are Rhynconellids that are similar too, but the “mouth line” of Rhynconellids tends to upturn abruptly near the front.

@mackenzie-ross-2 Thanks! 😁

@i-edwards@dominik-niehaus Hi, everybody! Very cool fossil! It has a ferny texture to the leaves, so I’d say it’s a plant. In fact it looks similar to this one:

Specimen 64064

What do you all think?

@jbauer@i-edwards I agree, it definitely looks like the back half of a trilobite mold. I’m not so sure about the age, the rocks I’ve collected have looked very different. I tend to find trilobites in freshly-split shale, but the rock here is really weathered. That makes sense if it was found along the river, but it’s interesting that the…[Read more]

Love the textures on this one! Fantastic!

@jbauer Neat! I’ve seen rocks like this before, and I often can’t quite determine if they’re wood either.

@dawn-vitale Hi, Dawn! What do the edges look like? I wonder if there’s some indication of rings or a bark layer or something.

@cameron-muskelly Thanks for the ID! 😁

@david-hanes Sounds good!

@david-hanes Sure, that sounds like fun! Just to set your expectations, though, keep in mind this is the first time I’ve been able to actually extract brachiopods relatively complete from the matrix, at least in West Virginia. But anyway,we’ll have to get together after all this Coronavirus stuff blows over.

@david-hanes Hi, David! These were found embedded in a really hard matrix. It was like a bed of a dozen or so, and I managed to thwack out 3 nice ones with my hammer and chisel.

It does look like the inside of a tree, but I think this is another pair of brachiopods.