New Additions to the Meaningful Menagerie

It occurred to me, while thinking about the topic linking some of my most recent writing and some of my inquiries into the world of possible topics that the beginning list could expand considerably.  And because that is so, I thought I'd list a couple of topics of interest

Tullymonstrum gregarium (shown here as a fossil along with many other lovely Mazon Creek fossils--and here as a reconstruction)

Hallucigenia sparsa--shown here with some of the other lovely members of the Burgess Shale fauna (and other Early Cambrian animals)  and here as a fossil

Brockosystis clintonensis--sorry no picture

Jaekelopterus rhenaniae--I think we'll just generalize and call them Eurypterids--or perhaps we'll go with one with which I had a close personal encounter near Rochester, New York--Pterygotus buffaloensis

The wonderful, the marvelous, the elegant, and the enormous state fossil of Ohio Isotelus, probably in its manifestation as I. gigas, but shown here among others of its kind to emphasis its relative enormity.  I should note that in my garage I have a three-to-four foot section of a 26-27 foot long feeding trace probably formed by this creature.  I found this in the world-famous and lovely, barren, Army Corps of Engineers edifice--the Caesar Creek Spillway.

And let us not forget nor neglect that monster from the seas of Kansas Xiphactinus, shown here in its cannibal incarnation--I'd say that his mean did not agree with him. More here about our second favorite fish.

Our most favorite fish and last of the list for a while:  Dunkleosteus, Dunkleosteus terreli, Dunkleosteus (page down)--featured prominently in Hayao Miyazaki's beautiful film Ponyo  (or at least a tribe of some Devonian placoderms.)

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