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| Top and bottom photographs--both encrusting bryozoan colonies called scientifically, genus Fistulopora from the upper Pennsylvanian Lecompton Limestone, Kansas; Shawnee Group, Virgilian Stage--303 to 301 million years old. Top--Fistulopora bryozoans covering a pelecypod shell. Specimen at bottom a genuine three-for-one fossil specimen. It's a genus Neospirifer brachiopod whose brachial valve (facing camera) is practically engulfed by an encrusting Fistulopora bryozoan colony (those minute circular "perforations" are where each individual bryozoan animal lived); also, along the groove at the brachiopod's hingeline, just to the the left of the beak (left, that is, from the perspective of facing the camera) are three wheat grain to American football-shaped Triticites fusulind tests secreted by an extinct single-celled organism. |