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Half a billion
years ago, the first brachiopods appeared, and the first were
very small and petite. Every specimen we found were inarticulate
brachs, with phosphatic shells. They ranged in size from less
than a millimeter to around a centimeter in size. Because of
this, most were very difficult to spot in the field! Any rock
with black specs visible on its surface had to suspect. Closer
examination with a hand lens usually allowed the potential suspects
to be ruled as fossils or lichen growths. Under the stereo microscope,
these fossils show their beauty, many of them preserved with
fine details.
Brachiopods from
the Abrigo include the following genera: Lingulella, Curticia,
Dicellomus, Billingsella, Acrotretids, Eorthis, Plectotrophia,
Nanorthis, Diparelasma, Hesperonomia, Zygospira. Most that we
found were Billingsella.
About these images:
All images below were taken with a 10 mega pixel integrated CMOS
camera on our zoom trinocular AmScope stereo microscope. Ive
put the scale in each image below for size comparison, along
with the magnification.
Click on Thumbnails
below for the full size images:
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