Description
It is harder and harder to obtain fossils from this private quarry in Middleport, New York
This is a wonderful Fossil Cystoid with Arms. But there is alsso a Graptolite on this large plate. Plates like this from the Rochester Shale of New York show what life abounded in the ancient Silurian sea and how they may have died.
This Fossil Cystoid with Arms was collected decades ago and just recently prepared by our prep lab. It has a Graptolite colony on the same side at the bottom.
Fossils from this site are preserved in Spectacular detail. Because of the wide variety and number of these fossils were preserved in silt the detail is amazing. Because of large storms such as hurricanes the seas were often rough but the storms did not stay over water. They often hit land and washed silt and sediment into the sea. Because this silt was so fine it preserved these fossils in great detail.
This Fossil Cystoid with Arms is actually an animal and not a plant. These were quarried from the Cystoid Layer and this one has been damaged due to a storm event. But this is still an exceptional piece and the theca is very large. They lived during the Silurian Period of the Paleozoic when storms were quite common.
These animals lived in the warm inland sea that covered the area during the Silurian Period some 420 million years ago. The creatures were living near what is now Middleport New York and were established near a delta system that periodically buried them in silt. It is because the silt hardened into stone that preserved the fossils in detail.
This Fossil Cystoid with Arms has exceptional detail and it has been prepared using air abrasive tools. The theca is 3/4 inches long and it is 6 inches long. It sits on a matrix that is 6 1/2 inches by 11 inches.
