Tuesday, February 7, 2012

A little bit of whimsy

I am generally fairly serious in this blog, but every now and then a fossil comes along that makes me giggle. Today it came from Florida. More specifically, it came from the Pleistocene deposits south of Lake Okeechobee. These deposits are renowned for the molluscan fauna that is present in them (and if you want to check out more of the molluscan fauna, I recommend Heilprin's Explorations on the west coast of Florida and in the Okeechobee wilderness from 1887 - some of the taxonomic names have been revised, but it is still a great overview).
 Today's specimen comes from a lot of five Trivia pediculus collected by a CT resident, and then donated to the Peabody Museum in 1947. Four of the specimens were typical Trivia specimens. The fifth had been colonized by two barnacles.
YPM.069233 - Trivia pediculus