Description
Devonian fossils from around Sylvania. The area of Northern Ohio and Southern Michigan was once the bottom of a shallow salt water sea teeming with life.
These are examples of those creatures. In this collectors case is a very large paraspirifer brachiopod. These were denizens of those shallow seas. All were buried by a fine grained soft mud to begin their long process of fossilization.
The Large Fossil Paraspirifer Brachiopod is one of the best known of the Ohio Brachiopods but seldom found today. The Devonian Period was a time when ancient tropical seas covered Northern Ohio and Southern Michigan. And at that time the area was warm and sub-tropical. Life on land was just beginning to take hold but the seas were teeming with life. Animals such as these corals and brachiopods lived on the bottom and thrived.
Because of the tropical storms that ravaged the area, these animals were killed and buried. This Large Fossil Ohio Brachiopod is but a snapshot of life during the Devonian. The fossils are quite plentiful and are easily found in the beds of streams and rivers when water level is low. Certain areas of gray shale or clay are the most productive.
Brachiopods were animals like modern sea shells with a hard shell. These animals were filter feeders eating plankton and other food as it floated by. Because they were hard shelled animals the preserved detail very well.
This Fossil Paraspirifer Brachiopod is 1 3/4 inches wide and sits on a matrix 4 1/4 by 3 inches.