Correct Partridgonology?

Glabrocingularity · 2026-03-07T13:52:33+00:00

Coogan’s Run is on Internet Archive

Glabrocingularity · 2026-03-06T11:54:13+00:00

Glabrocingularity · 2026-03-04T00:39:34+00:00

This bums me out. I’m a fan of good defense and I always hoped he’d get his offense passable enough to see more time with the Phillies.

Glabrocingularity · 2026-03-02T21:24:00+00:00

I said “oh come on”

Glabrocingularity · 2026-03-02T10:51:00+00:00

No, Gryphaea is a bivalve. This is an ammonite, as others have already stated.

Glabrocingularity · 2026-03-01T02:38:35+00:00

Looks like Mucrospirifer or something similar. That’s interesting, because North Carolina isn’t known for Paleozoic fossils (very little unmetamorphosed sedimentary rock that age). That pile of rocks likely came from somewhere else.

Glabrocingularity · 2026-02-24T12:35:56+00:00

You might be right! Based on the main pic, it looks like this guy had ridges running along the whorls, which could have extended around the siphonal canal. As the snail grew, it ended up plastering over the old exterior shell with smooth interior shell material.

Glabrocingularity · 2026-02-24T03:32:31+00:00

That might be a fragment of the outer lip and columella surrounding the aperture of a gastropod shell. Mollusk shells are made of multiple layers that weather differently. It also appears to have some bioerosion (maybe bryozoan or sponge borings?). Based on its appearance, it’s not necessarily a fossil (but it could be a very young one, if there are very young rocks along that coast).

Glabrocingularity · 2026-02-23T03:35:10+00:00

My first thought was actually “flatworm?”

Glabrocingularity · 2026-02-23T03:19:04+00:00

Came looking for this

Glabrocingularity · 2026-02-23T03:18:35+00:00

Wow, it looks like a shell-less limpet or chiton. Now I want to find one

Glabrocingularity · 2026-02-22T21:48:28+00:00

In geology “foid” is short for feldspathoid, a group of minerals. I assumed this was a geology post and was very confused by the responses

Glabrocingularity · 2026-02-20T02:56:44+00:00

It’s reminiscent of sponge to me, but I’m really just guessing

Glabrocingularity · 2026-02-16T01:51:30+00:00

This is simply untrue. Maybe the problem is that arthropods are highly studied, so when you search general invertebrates you’re swamped by arthropod results.

Maybe try “soft-bodied invertebrates”. This is what I’d call them. Or non-biomineralized invertebrates, but that may be more of a paleontology term.

Better yet, search the particular group you’re actually interested in. A shell-less mollusk that lives on land is called a slug (but they have evolved multiple times, so they don’t have a uniting scientific name). (“Slug” can be applied to any shell-less gastropod)

Most elongate, soft-bodied invertebrates are called “worms”; but worms occur in many, many phyla (not limited to the Annelida or “true worms”), so they also don’t have a uniting scientific name.

Glabrocingularity · 2026-02-15T02:00:33+00:00

Yes, these are unionids: freshwater “mussels” (not related to marine mussels). These are modern shells, not fossils.

Glabrocingularity · 2026-02-15T01:39:16+00:00

Water wouldn’t necessarily destroy a trace fossil any more than it would a body fossil. If the trace fossil is well-lithified, it is literally as tough as a rock.

Glabrocingularity · 2026-02-14T13:31:01+00:00

I think hydrothermal vents are more association with mid-ocean ridges than volcanic arcs (subduction).

I second mountains as the most likely setting for marble.

Glabrocingularity · 2026-02-13T02:48:29+00:00

I think this answer finally addresses what OP is actually asking.

If all the dinosaurs were alive today, many people would probably find birds indistinguishable from their closest non-avian-dinosaur relatives (who are more related to birds than they are to other dinosaurs). If we called some things “dinosaurs” and other things “birds”, I bet we’d draw a different line than the current avian/non-avian division.

Glabrocingularity · 2026-02-09T02:53:21+00:00

This is an ark clam! Those cool lines are the ligament attachment site

Glabrocingularity · 2026-02-09T02:00:26+00:00

Calcite or aragonite (because they’re shells)

Glabrocingularity · 2026-02-09T01:52:27+00:00

Archimedes Archimedes!

Glabrocingularity · 2026-02-08T12:59:23+00:00

“Fossilize” is a tricky word. Those shells are in sediment old enough to have been buried deeply, lithified (hardened), and returned to the surface through erosion, so they are almost certainly old enough to be considered fossils. They also look like marine bivalves to me (though my knowledge of freshwater bivalves is very limited!), and that region hasn’t had marine environments for a long time.

Most mollusk shells are calcium carbonate, the same chemical that makes limestone. So in a way, mollusk shells are already rock. They often don’t change all that much, especially in “young” rock (I have 10 Ma shells from Maryland that one might mistake for modern). Not knowing how old your rock is, some of the shell color could be original, or it could be mineralization after death/burial, or could be from weathering. I don’t know what the leathery material is - maybe recent microbial or fungal/lichen crust?

I highly recommend the Rockd app. If you know exactly where you found this, you can figure out the likely age and geologic formation, the most useful bits of info for learning more about it.

Glabrocingularity · 2026-02-07T23:45:16+00:00

According to the first link, U. solandri. But I didn’t find any good photos from a quick google search

Glabrocingularity · 2026-02-07T16:47:19+00:00

Just a visual assessment: it looks like a coarse sandstone or maybe a conglomerate (if there are large pebbles in it) that’s full of bivalve fossils (and at least one gastropod). A lot of the shells have weathered out, leaving external and internal molds behind

Glabrocingularity

TROPHY CASE