Where: West Virginia (37.5° N, 81.1° W: paleocoordinates 13.9° S, 23.3° W)

• coordinate stated in text

When: Pride Shale Member (Bluestone Formation), Late/Upper Mississippian (330.9 - 323.2 Ma)

Environment/lithology: marine; carbonate and limestone

Size class: macrofossils

• The pectoral fin, pelvic fin, most of the anal fin, posterior skull margin, and central body region are present and well preserved, but the caudal fin, dorsal fin, upper body outline, and much of the skull are missing. The nearly perfect articulation of the fossil fish suggests that the entire animal probably was once in the rock, but that the parts of the skeleton not enclosed by the concretion were destroyed by weathering and erosion.

Collected by John Windolph

Collection methods: surface (in situ), chemical,

• The fish was discovered by splitting the concretion, whereupon an internal view of the scale pattern and left posterior skull elements (Fig. 3) was revealed. Much of the scale pattern and the conformation of the anal fin was discernible from this internal view, but nothing could be ascertained about the pelvic fins and little about the pectoral fins or the external ornamentation of the scales. For this reason, we decided that the left side of the fish should be acid prepared to try to determine something about its external appearance.

Primary reference: R. E. Weems and J. F. Windolph. 1986. A New Actinopterygian Fish (Paleonisciformes) From The Upper Mississippian Bluestone Formation Of West Virginia. Proceedings of The Biological Society of Washington 99:584-601 [M. Uhen/M. Shalap/M. Shalap]more details

Purpose of describing collection: general faunal/floral analysis

PaleoDB collection 124197: authorized by Mark Uhen, entered by Margaret Shalap on 07.02.2012, edited by Joseph Flannery-Sutherland

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)