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PEANUT WOOD

Peanut Wood from Western Australia. It is petrified wood. It was driftwood that sank to the floor of a shallow sea. Then it was set upon by a bivalve called, Teredo or shipworm. It was covered with mud and the borings were filled with sediment which are the white areas. Formed during the Cretaceous Period, 120,000 million years ago.

Peanut Wood from Western Australia
Peanut wood from Western Australia

Photos by Dan Snow

ADMIRE PALLASITE METEORITE

METEORITE TYPE: Stony Iron

CLASSIFICATION: Pallasite, MG

LOCATION: Admire, Lyon County, Kansas, USA

DISCOVERED: 1881

TOTAL KNOW WEIGHT: 2 Tons

SPECIMEN WEIGHT: 27.6 gm Full Slab

The Admire Pallasite Meteorite was discovered in 1881 by a farmer plowing his field in East Central Kansas. This main group Pallasite is loaded with translucent green crystals.

The Admire is a huge meteorite fall-over 2 tons have been recovered. The Admire is also one of the few meteorites that have facetable Peridot crystals.

This specimen was recovered, cut, polished, etched and stabilized by KD Meteorites.

The first picture is the full slab. The rest of the pictures were shot under a digital microscope. Note the green Peridot crystals.

ADMIRE PALLASITE METEORITE - SLAB
ADMIRE PALLASITE METEORITE – SLAB

All photos by Dan Snow

CRINOIDS

Scyphocrinites elegans - Crinoid with lobolith float Upper Silurian Period

Crinoids in the collection of Dan & Connie Snow : Photos by Dan Snow

Scyphocrinites elegans:  Crinoid with lobolith float Upper Silurian Period, Djebel Issoumour, Alnif, Morroco

 

CRINOIDS are know as feather stars or sea lilies and are echinoderms.  A familiar form of echinoderm is the starfish.  Crinoids are alive today in the oceans but were more prevalent in prehistory.  They live primarily in shallow water but have also been found in extreme deep sea environments.

Crinoids resemble a flower with tentacles but are in fact animals.  They are filter feeders and have feather-like appendages that strain food particles from the ocean currents.  Some live as floating organisms but most are attached to the ocean floor by the means of a segmented stem.  Most fossilized crinoids are found disarticulated in beds of numerous fragments but they also can be found in articulated forms as they once were when alive.  The first occurrences of crinoids in the fossil record as found in the Ordovician Period.