Field of Science

Name the Bug # 43


Attribution to follow.

Update: Identity now available here. Figure from Cole (1939).

6 comments:

  1. First!

    No I jest. OK my shot in the dark for what it's worth. It's obviously a fossil marine invert but how big - difficult to say. 4,5, and 6 seem to be the main body of a subspherical organism with scales or plates and a spiral apex, which could be an echinoderm, possibly a small helicoplacoid? The other images are a mystery - they look like cross-sections - maybe of arms or feeding organs (which would rule out helicoplacoids, but maybe there are other fossil echinoderms with spiral structures and arms that I haven't come accross...) but they look nothing like echinoderm x-sections, so maybe they are just compressed lateral views of the whole animal. Hmm. Told you I was going to be vague. I hope this is another of your so-bizarre-it's only-in-one-google-result beasties.

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  2. It appears to be a calcareous organism that has been studied via thin sections - I have two gueses 1. A tabulate coral (some of the longitudinal sections really do look like a section through an individual tabulate coralite - but why no other adjacent coralites?)
    2. A Receptaculite, this certainly fits the spiral transverse sections (well I guess they are transverse), but if so then I have no idea at all what the hell those longitudinal sections might be.
    Glad I'm not in the runnning for points.

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  3. You are a harsh quizmeister. I thought fossil marine invert was in the right ball park. It's not like you provided a scale bar or any kind of context... Do I have ANY points in this ludicrous competition...?

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  4. I was inclined to be generous, but I suspect that to get points you at least have to be in the right kingdom :-P

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  5. Looks like some kind of Beetle to me, but i guess there is some other scientific name for it that i don't know! Am i right, is it a Beetle?

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