Wooster’s Fossil of the Week returns from its summer hiatus. It is appropriate, then, to feature as our first fossil of the new season an oyster species prominent in our summer research. This is Pycnodonte vesicularis (Lamarck, 1806), a very common fossil in the Cretaceous around the world. These particular specimens are from the Aubeterre Formation (Upper Campanian, Upper Cretaceous) exposed in the town of Archiac in southwestern France. They were collected by Macy Conrad (’18), Paul Taylor (Natural History Museum, London) and me during our June 2017 expedition. Above is the interior of a deeply concave left valve. The large spot near the middle is the single adductor muscle scar (thus the oyster, like all oysters, is monomyarian). It was a free-living oyster in soft, shallow platform marine sediments. This species has been used for all sorts of studies, from investigating paleoecology and evolution to paleoseasonality (see references below for a start).
This is the interior of the right valve, showing the corresponding muscle scar. The valves are very different in size and shape, so this oyster is termed inequivalved.
The exterior of the right valve, with characteristic faint radiating ridges. The tag, by the way, indicates the locality. Every one of our hundreds of oysters is tagged in this way.
Macy Conrad (’18) is seen here at the Archiac outcrop collecting specimens of Pycnodonte vesicularis.
A typical bed of P. vesicularis in the Upper Campanian of SW France. This one is exposed along the sea cliffs at Pointe de Suzac.
References:
Brezina, S.S., Romero, M.V., Casadío, S. and Bremec, C. 2014. Boring polychaetes associated with Pycnodonte (Phygraea) vesicularis (Lamarck) from the Upper Cretaceous of Patagonia. A case of commensalism? Ameghiniana 51: 129-140.
De Winter, N.J., Vellekoop, J., Vorsselmans, R., Golreihan, A., Petersen, S.V., Meyer, K.W., Speijer, R.P. and Claeys, P. 2017. Cretaceous honeycomb oysters (Pycnodonte vesicularis) as palaeoseasonality records: A multi-proxy study. EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts 19: 4359.
Lamarck, J.B. 1806. Suite des mémoires sur les fossiles des environs de Paris. Annales du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle 7: 130-139.
Platel, J.-P. 1996. Stratigraphie, seédimentologie et évolution géodynamique de la plate-forme carbonatée du Crétacé supérieur du nord du basin d’Aquitaine. Géologie de la France 4: 33-58.
Videt, B. 2003. Dynamique des paléoenvironnements à huîtres du Crétacé supérieur nord-aquitain (SO France) et du Mio-Pliocène andalou (SE Espagne): biodiversité, analyse séquentielle, biogéochimie (Doctoral dissertation, Université Rennes 1).
