Description

Here is your chance to own a classic fossil from a classic site. A nice showy piece as well
harder to obtain fossils from this private quarry in Middleport, New York

Classic Calymene Niagarensis Trilobite from the famous Rochester Shale Deposits of New York. These are becoming extremely rare from this site.

This is a Super Classic Calymene Niagarensis Trilobite. But these Silurian Period fossils are becoming more rare as this quarry is beginning to play out. These were recently prepared in our prep lab from a decades old stack of unprepared fossils from the Middleport Quarry.

The Super Calymene Niagarensis Trilobite is another trilobite found during the digging of the Erie Canal.  First found in 1839 in a gorge dug for the canal.  The trilobite is oval shaped and at first glance, it is difficult to judge which is the cephalon and which is they pygidium.  Having only 8 – 10 body segments, the Calymene Niagarensis Trilobite method of rolling up is much like that of a rolly polly closing-just folding over because of this it can protect itself from danger.  The head and tail sections are quite smooth.

During the Silurian Period New York State was the bottom of a shallow sea. Because of it’s location near the equator many large storms like hurricanes  formed. But these storms did not only stay in the water. They hit the land and washed mud into the sea and buried many animals. Once buried the animals began the process of becoming fossils. Because the mud was fine grained the fossils preserved very well.

This one is 5/8 of an inch on matrix 3 1/4 by 2 1/2.