Catalog Number: CG-0018
Amphiscapha is a commonly recovered genus of gastropod fossil in Parks Township. It often appears as a flat spiral within the shale. Two Meekospira accompanied this particular specimen. I used a pair of engineering tweezers to remove some matrix from the sides of the larger of the two Meekospira. Being familiar in shale, these are difficult to withdraw from the matrix. The fossils are as fragile as the matrix they are in and often will break. It can be helpful to leave these in place on the original rock.
In 1942, J.B. Knight erected a new gastropod genus from an existing genus. He described Amphiscapha as:
Discoidal shells with the spire depressed and the umbilicus very wide and shallow.
J.B. Knight, Journal of Paleontology, Vol 16, No. 4, PP. 487-488, July 1942
It has a generally short geologic age range of 318 to 272 million years ago. The genus was extant for only 46 million years, which is shorter than most invertebrate species I have studied so far. Meekospira as a genus died out during the P-T Extinction event, where around 96% of all marine species perished. Amphiscapha died out 20 million years prior.
More about Amphiscapha online
- Taxon Page – Fossilworks
- Pennsylvanian Atlas of Ancient Life: American Midcontinent – Amphiscapha genus page.
- LakeNeosho.org – Amphiscapha reedsi (Knight, 1934)
- Taxon page for Meekospira – Fossilworks
References
- Knight, J.B., 1942, Four new genera of Paleozoic Gastropoda. Journal of Paleontology 16(4):487-488