#ohioshale

[paleochick]

Today, I finally got to see the #Dunkleosteus sign & label copy that I helped design while I was working as a Naturalist at Rocky River Nature Center! It turned out GREAT! #scicomm #labelcopy #ilovemuseums #fish #ohioshale

[paleochick]

Love my husband's fossil posts! ------------------ This is the rarest of rare fossils: a nearly complete Devonian shark! . This is a shark called Cladoselache and it has a surprise inside: look closely and you will see a concavicarid (pocket head) invertebrate in its stomach! At 358 MILLION years old, this fossil is one of the oldest complete sharks known to science! Where do we find them? . Cleveland, Ohio! The preservation is astonishing. Muscle bundles, gill arches, eye rings, dermal denticles, cartilage, fin impressions, and stomach contents are commonly preserved in the rock unit known as the Cleveland Shale. The city of Cleveland is built on this bedrock that was once the muddy bottom of an ancient sea. . Dead or dying sharks and other fish (like Dunkleosteus) would sink to the sea bottom where the oxygen-poor environment would prevent their decay while a constant trickle of sediment buried them. The result is an amazing assemblage of some of the finest preserved sharks in the fossil record on Earth! . . #Cladoselache #fossil #cle #thisiscle #cleveland #ohiopaleontology #paleontology #Dunkleosteus #lagerstatten #clevelandshale #ohioshale #shark #devonian #famennian