Sometimes fossils can be more useful when broken than whole. Above is a much-abused rhynchonellid brachiopod from the Road Canyon Formation (Middle Permian, Roadian, about 270 million years old) found in the Glass Mountains of southwestern Texas. It is part of a set of silicified fossils we etched out of a block of limestone in the last century. The shell has been replaced with resistant silica, so it was easy to extract from the limestone matrix with a long bath in hydrochloric acid that dissolved the carbonate but left everything else. The fossils are like delicate little glass husks. We’ve featured them in this blog several times.
Update: Matt Clapham kindly corrected me in the comments, and it is worth repeating in the text: “It’s Stenoscisma. The large spoon-shaped projection is actually called a spondylium, formed from merged dental plates and it’s quite distinctive for the Stenoscismatidae. The crura are broken but still visible in your specimen; they are the little struts parallel to the narrowest part of the spondylium. There are five Stenoscisma species that appear common in the Road Canyon Formation and yours looks most similar to Stenoscisma triquetrum to me (weakly sulcate with ribs that are somewhat subtle but still extend near the beak).” I made a bonehead mistake labeling the spondylium incorreectly, hence the “c”. Here’s to the value of Twitter, blogging, and knowledgeable colleagues!
Here’s the dorsal side of the specimen for completion. The exterior is in poor shape.
I’d love to identify this specimen to at least the genus level [update: see above and the comments!], but there is not enough detail preserved, at least for my skill set. The Permian brachiopods of West Texas were famously studied by G. Arthur Cooper and Richard E. Grant in the 1960s and 1970s. The numbers of species are overwhelming in this ancient reef system, and almost all of them are preserved in this delicate way.
References:
Cooper, G.A., and Grant, R.E., 1964, New Permian stratigraphic units in Glass Mountains, West Texas. American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin 48: 1581-1588.
Cooper, G.A., and Grant, R.E. 1966. Permian rock units in the Glass Mountains, West Texas, In: Contributions to stratigraphy, 1966: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1244-E: E1-E9.
Cooper, G.A. and Grant, R.E. 1972. Permian brachiopods of West Texas, I. Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology 14: 1–228. [and five other volumes]
Olszewski, T.D. and Erwin, D.H. 2009. Change and stability in Permian brachiopod communities from western Texas. Palaios 24: 27-40.
It’s Stenoscisma. The large spoon-shaped projection is actually called a spondylium, formed from merged dental plates and it’s quite distinctive for the Stenoscismatidae. The crura are broken but still visible in your specimen; they are the little struts parallel to the narrowest part of the spondylium. There are five Stenoscisma species that appear common in the Road Canyon Formation and yours looks most similar to Stenoscisma triquetrum to me (weakly sulcate with ribs that are somewhat subtle but still extend near the beak).
Thank you very much, Matt! The text is corrected by adding your comment in full. Now I’m in that state of wondering what I was thinking! Thanks for being quick and decisive.