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Product Description
Coming from Central Europe, this is a HUGE museum-class brachiopod fossil colony with a provenance that is not usually seen in the commercial fossil market. This fantastic display specimen shows supremely preserved, large 3D examples of Schizophoria sp. and Mucrospirifer sp. brachiopods COMPLETE WITH BOTH VALVES INTACT AND CLOSED. These species are found in the Middle Devonian Kowala Formation of the Holy Cross Mountains in Poland. Interestingly enough, these brachiopods are from the same site where the world's OLDEST TETRAPOD FOOTPRINTS are found - fossil evidence of the first existence of four-legged vertebrates walking on land.
Brachiopod fossils are often neglected in fossil collections despite the important role they played in the history of life on our planet. Most of the brachiopod fossils you will find for sale are small, in their raw state and unattractive. This a shame because most of these invertebrates had highly detailed and aesthetic anatomy in their shells yet, if not properly prepared in a lab, they look little more than ugly rocks. If you wish for a beautiful brachiopod fossil of substantial size, this is a great offering because each specimen is of the finest preservation, fully lifelike with 3D detail and lab cleaned in our facility, setting on a piece of original Devonian shale as they might have looked when in a prehistoric colony.
These brachiopods are not your ordinary, cheap, rock show fossils. The price is higher than usually seen because of the extraordinary labor and other costs involved in our preparation of these specimens we are offering. Each brachiopod was prepared with the same time-consuming techniques as trilobites - extracted from the host rock and cleaned with pneumatic tools and air abrasives. Nevertheless, you will NEVER see brachiopod fossils such as these! The results are simply incredible, making these the FINEST BRACHIOPOD FOSSILS you will encounter, not to mention the rare location they are from!
These Schizophoria sp. and Mucrospirifer sp. brachiopods have been carefully extracted and cleaned by us in our lab facility and assembled on original Devonian shale. With the majority of brachiopod fossils found measuring less than .25" across, these brachiopods measure 3 to 5 times that! This is a large and VERY impressive display specimen of Devonian brachiopods from a famous scientific site in paleontology.
