Since it isn't a coin, I am making a thread of it's own.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present you the 450 million years trilobite I bought at the weekend:
There was an artisanship fair at the weekend that presented local and foreign exhibitors.
Some were selling clothes, others statues and decorations, others toys, others souvenirs of their home countries. Some were selling minerals and gems, and one had a few fossils too.
I'm not much into collecting them (they're way more expensive than coins), but since there was one of these fossil critters for sale in my town with a bearable price, I decided to pick it.
I also bought a beautiful wooden elephant from India on this fair.
Getting an animal fossil is nice, but it's nicer when you know what animal is, so here comes the identification:
Phylum Artropoda
Class Trilobita
Order Phacopida
Family Calymenidae
Genus Flexicalymene
Species Flexicalymene ouzregui
Period Late Ordovician, Katian Stage, 453 to 445 million years ago.
I paid the equivalent of almost US$ 70. It's a bit expensive (this species in particular is common and less expensive in specialised online shops), but I will not complain since I had the chance of buying it in person on my city.
Besides the wooden elephant, just some Portuguese pastries.
There were two sellers from Egypt with papyruses and other souvenirs, but this year I picked none, already have various.
Since it isn't a coin, I am making a thread of it's own.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present you the 450 million years trilobite I bought at the weekend:
There was an artisanship fair at the weekend that presented local and foreign exhibitors.
Some were selling clothes, others statues and decorations, others toys, others souvenirs of their home countries. Some were selling minerals and gems, and one had a few fossils too.
I'm not much into collecting them (they're way more expensive than coins), but since there was one of these fossil critters for sale in my town with a bearable price, I decided to pick it.
I also bought a beautiful wooden elephant from India on this fair.
Getting an animal fossil is nice, but it's nicer when you know what animal is, so here comes the identification:
Phylum Artropoda
Class Trilobita
Order Phacopida
Family Calymenidae
Genus Flexicalymene
Species Flexicalymene ouzregui
Period Late Ordovician, Katian Stage, 453 to 445 million years ago.
Absolutely beautiful specimen you have there! All the better you were able to identify the exact species and time period.
Thank you!
To be honest, I had luck with the ID.
I knew beforehand from the seller that it was from Morocco, so I just needed to type “Morocco trilobite” on Google. And when I did it, various specimens from online shops appeared, I just had to pay attention and find the type that matches mine. Then it was just searching more data about the species.
And this species is common enough to appear in many shops.
It can mean that when my trilobite was alive there was a ring in our sky!!!
Imagining together the continent configuration of the time and the proposed ring system, the resulting image of the planet looks like you're looking at somewhere from Star Wars. It's crazy to think that this planet was our Earth but long ago.
Ah, how did I heard about this, you ask.
I've saw a paleontology artwork online showing the ring, and the post's author mentioned the new paper. I went “wait whaaat??” and had to look immediately on Google if it was a real story. And that news release was the first result, the paper being the second (I typed “ordovician earth ring”).
I think that this story can make some headlines in the next days.
Well guys, I did it again, bought another trilobite.
I wanted to go to a gemstone store in another city, but with all these rainy weekends I gave up and ordered one online.
And here it is:
And not only it arrived in one piece today, but the package also arrived with a bonus inside:
Trilobite ID data:
Phylum Artropoda
Class Trilobita
Order Phacopida
Suborder Phacopina
Superfamily Acastoidea
Family Acastidea
Subfamily Asteropyginae
Genus Hollardops
Species Hollardops mesocristata
Period Early Devonian, upper Emsian Stage, 402 to 393 million years ago.
Procedence Anti-Atlas Mountains, Morocco
Measurements
Length 7 cm
Width 4 cm
Height 1 cm
Teeth ID data:
Phylum Chordata
Class Reptilia
Order Squamata
Clade Mosasauria
Family Mosasauridae
Genus Mosasauridae indeterminate, possibly Prognathodon
Period Late Cretaceous, Turonian to Maastrichtian, 94 to 66 million years ago.
Procedence Morocco
Measurements
Length 3 cm (broken one 2 cm)
Width varies (1 to 3 cm)
Edit: it was labeled as indeterminate mosasaur where I bought it, but many foreign sites are assigning these teeth to the genus Prognathodon, Late Maastrichtian Age (~70 M.A.), from the phosphate mines of the Ouled Abdoun Basin near Khouribga, Morocco.
The next day I found this arrow head and Native American pottery in my same creek. So although the flood cause huge erosion. It did throw up these pieces.
Taking a break from swapping for a while, but still interested in pre 1799 Spanish coins, I will make time for that!
Fascinating stuff all of this — the fossils, minerals, artefacts…
I have a crystal that is amost identical to yours, redsmithstudios. I also have a few fossils, including very small trilobites) and other minerals which I should photograph (once I organize everything better).
I have a few Roman artefacts as well such as a small piece of 3rd-4th-century black mosaic floor. It had been thrown in the garbage (!!) so I rescued it.
I think I have three trilobites — that's a ninelobite alltogether (🤦).
It's always fascinating when you get one in your own hands, it's a different feeling compared to seeing one in a museum.
And getting a fossil on hand is different than getting an ancient coin, it's not just history of mankind but of the whole world.
I've just remembered, once a while ago Quant-Geek posted here not a mere pottery artifact but an entire mesopotamian cuneiform clay tablet. That was incredible, of another level.
To give a sense of the time span, let's take the age of the trilobite, 450,000,000 years, and the age of the Roman Empire at about 2000 years. Now, let's imagine these two numbers are seconds which we then convert into years to get the same proportions, but in easier-to-grasp time spans:
450,000,000 seconds would be 14 years + 3 months
2000 seconds would be 33 minutes + 20 seconds
Basically, if the trilobite had lived in November 2023, the Roman Empire would have happened between 2 and 3 minutes ago.
To give a sense of the time span, let's take the age of the trilobite, 450,000,000 years, and the age of the Roman Empire at about 2000 years. Now, let's imagine these two numbers are seconds which we then convert into years to get the same proportions, but in easier-to-grasp time spans:
450,000,000 seconds would be 14 years + 3 months
2000 seconds would be 33 minutes + 20 seconds
Basically, if the trilobite had lived in November 2023, the Roman Empire would have happened between 2 and 3 minutes ago.
That math is new to me. And very amazing, thanks for showing it.
The one I heard is that comparation of the history of the planet within a 24-hour clock, where the rise of human species happened only after 23:59 and rise of human civilization only one or two seconds before midnight.
I really forgot the exact timings, it was something like complex life arose only after 21:00 or 22:00, dinosaurs ruled only for a brief period after the 23:00… Anyways, almost 90% of the history of Earth is composed of the Archean and Proterozoic eons where only bacteria lived back there.
Well i have this fossil. I have to say the story with this one. Me and my grandson were out looking for something for show a tell. He was 3 or 4 grade, he is 25 now. Well it was a big hit with the kids. Not with the teacher his mom or my wife. They found no humor in it. Now it a good memory me and my grandson have. I will have to pass it and paperwork to him. Sorry that was very bad humor.
Well i can still say i have the oldest dung on my block
I don't have any of these big quartz crystals, but when I see them in artisanship fairs they always remember me the crystals from Superman's Fortress of Solitude.
Do you have any data on these fossil seashells?
Back at the beginning of this thread, I've posted my first trilobite, and at the following week that article theorizing a ring in our planet (coincidentally on the period the trilobite comes from) was released.
And, yesterday, I've found an online artwork, that I want to share here:
The guy made such an awesome work with that maps, it looks like the real thing.
It's a totally alien world but it's our homeworld…
Everything there looks so alien to us, the land configuration, the animals, the lack of plants… And now there's the ring as cherry top.
I've found my home region on that map, and it's exactly the opposite of today: It is in the middle of a mountain range, far from the sea. And the whole region is nearly upside down compared to today's South America.
But we still have that mountains. Whats remains of them forms a series of ridges along the Brazilian coast.
Well, I'm certainly not an expert on fossils. The closest I came about these shells (second row) is they're Jurassic trigoniid bivalves. There are quite a few in the family, and I cannot really distinguish between them.
What is interesting is the way they (other small sea-fossils as well) are laid in the sediments: first of all, they were all live (closed) at the moment of catastrophe and concentrated in narrow strips, “sorted” by size. Probable explanation is that this wasn't their habitat but were brought there by a (tsunami?) wave from far away. This, as well as some other findings, makes the fall of asteroid off current Madagascar quite a viable theory.
Here is something crazy that y’all will be able to appreciate! Today I found this stigmaria fossil in the river-stone at a job site. Just happened to see it in this pile of common stone!
Taking a break from swapping for a while, but still interested in pre 1799 Spanish coins, I will make time for that!
Here is something crazy that y’all will be able to appreciate! Today I found this stigmaria fossil in the river-stone at a job site. Just happened to see it in this pile of common stone!
Something similar, probably fossilized coral though, I found in Crimea:
Very cool, did you go to a certain place for these, or were you just searching in the random dirt?
There are certain beaches on the gulf of Mexico that are better for fossils. When I was a kid and I visited my grandfather, I found many sharks teethe and mammal teeth, including the Giant Beaver also camel and horse teeth, a large vertebrate, and part of a deer skull with the antler. This was in the area where they found the saber-tooth skulls. Good times!
Taking a break from swapping for a while, but still interested in pre 1799 Spanish coins, I will make time for that!
