Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Zig-zag oysters from the Middle Jurassic of southern Israel

Actinostreon Matmor Jurassic 171 173 585These pretty little oysters are from the Matmor Formation (Middle Jurassic, Callovian) of Makhtesh Gadol in southern Israel. Because I regrettably missed going to Israel for fieldwork this summer, I thought I’d choose these exquisite fossils to be celebrated this week. The genus is Actinostreon Bayle, 1878. There may be more than one species here, so we’ll just leave the identification at the genus level.
Actinostreon single 585Actinostreon is very common in some units of the Matmor Formation. Hundreds can be found scattered through a single unit. They were epifaunal filter-feeders as all oysters, and like most attached to hard substrates. The Actinostreon in the Matmor Formation commonly settled on small shell fragments in marl, giving them the appearance of dwelling in mud. Their zig-zag commissures (their shells are formally called plicate) strengthened their shells with ribs and helped them maintain high water inflow for filter-feeding with a relatively small opening (gape).
bayle 300The French paleontologist and mineralogist Claude Émile Bayle (1819-1895) named the genus Actinostreon in 1878. Bayle was raised in the beautiful French coastal city of La Rochelle. His family was related to Alcide Dessalines d’Orbigny (1802-1857), one of the greatest French naturalists, so collecting and analyzing fossils and modern shells was encouraged. Bayle studied at the Ecole Polytechnique and then the Ecole des Mines. After his schooling he was employed as the Chief Engineer of the Corps des Mines. He assembled a large collection of fossils (about 185,000 of which were cataloged). In 1848 he began teaching paleontology and mineralogy at the Ecole des Mines, retiring in 1881. His paleontological specialties were mollusks (especially Jurassic and Cretaceous bivalves) and Cenozoic mammals. He had a fairly modest publication record until he produced his magnum opus, an 1878 fossil atlas to accompany a new geological map of France. It is here that he described Actinostreon, and many other new taxa.

References:

Alberti, M., Fürsich, F.T. and Pandey, D.K. 2013. Seasonality in low latitudes during the Oxfordian (Late Jurassic) reconstructed via high-resolution stable isotope analysis of the oyster Actinostreon marshi (J. Sowerby, 1814) from the Kachchh Basin, western India. International Journal of Earth Sciences 102: 1321-1336.

Bayle, E. 1878. Fossiles principaux des terrains: Explication carte geologique France. France Service Carte Geologique, vol. 4, pt. 1, pl. 132.

Hirsch, F. 1980. Jurassic bivalves and gastropods from northern Sinai and southern Israel. Israel Journal of Earth Sciences 28: 128-163.

Machalski, M. 1998. Oyster life positions and shell beds from the Upper Jurassic of Poland. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 43: 609-634.

About Mark Wilson

Mark Wilson is a Professor of Geology at The College of Wooster. He specializes in invertebrate paleontology, carbonate sedimentology, and stratigraphy. He also is an expert on pseudoscience, especially creationism.
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