@matthew-graham Hi, Matthew! First of all, that’s a great fossil! I love all the brachiopods on it. I’m assuming you’re asking about the smooth darker gray fossil. My guess is that it is a brachiopod because I’m assuming the dip is the midline depression that are seen on many brachiopods. The smoothness of the shell is throwing me, though. I think…[Read more]

@matthew-gramling I agree, it really does look like a brachiopod. It kinda threw me when I was trying to ID it. If this was from another formation, I would totally assume it was a brachiopod.

That’s a great question that I hadn’t thought about before! My guess is that the impact crater didn’t affect the fossils in the Appalachians all that much. Those are much older than the Chesapeake impact, but they were probably too far away and sheltered by the mountains. The impact probably affected the fossils on the Coastal Plain though. Many…[Read more]

Cool specimen, @seanna-carter ! I think you’re right, @matthew-gramling , it seems like that area is from the Cretaceous and there aren’t any brachiopods in that formation, at least according to Rockd. I’m not able to place it any more specifically than just as a bivalve, though. The species Rockd listed didn’t look similar to this.

@charles-du No problem! Glad to help.

Hi, @matthew-gramling ! Cool specimen, @charles-du ! I think this looks like it might be Rafinesquina:
http://drydredgers.org/brachraf.htm

I’m not sure if I’d say it’s the particular species featured in that link, but it looks similar to all these “Rafies”:
http://drydredgers.org/thumb_by_articulate.htm#Rafinesquina

@sam-turner@matthew-gramling No problem! Glad I could help!

Hi, @sam-turner and @matthew-gramling ! I think this is a Pseudogygites pygidium:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudogygites

The latitude and longitude made it much easier to look up the formation on Rockd, so good job Sam! This looks like it came from the Lindsay Formation (Middle Ordovician) so you can use that to fill in the Geochronology…[Read more]

Hi, @matthew-gramling and @nathan-anderson! Looks like you were able to identify it, Nathan. Great specimen, by the way!