Calymene blumenbachii
| Calymene blumenbachii Temporal range:
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| Calymene blumenbachii, on display at the Natural History Museum, London | |
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| Species: | †C. blumenbachii
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| Calymene blumenbachii Brongniart in Desmarest, 1817
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Calymene blumenbachii, sometimes erroneously spelled blumenbachi, is a species of trilobite discovered in the limestone quarries of Wren's Nest Hill in Dudley, England. Nicknamed the Dudley Bug or Dudley Locust[1] by 18th century quarrymen it became a symbol of the town and featured on the Dudley County Borough Council coat-of-arms. Calymene blumenbachii is commonly found in Silurian rocks (422.5-427.5 million years ago) and is thought to have lived in the shallow waters of the Silurian, in low energy reefs. This particular species of Calymene (a fairly common genus in the Ordovician-Silurian) is unique to the Wenlock series in England, and comes from the Wenlock Limestone in Much Wenlock and Wren's Nest in Dudley. These sites seem to yield trilobites more readily than any other areas on the Wenlock Edge, and the rock here is dark grey as opposed to yellowish or whitish as it appears on other parts of the Edge, just a few miles away, in Church Stretton and elsewhere. This suggests local changes in the environment in which the rock was deposited.
References
- ^ Alex J. Chestnut. "Using morphometrics, phylogenetic systematics and parsimony analysis to gain insight into the evolutionary affinities of the Calymenidae Trilobita". OhioLINK ETD Center. Retrieved August 21, 2011.
External links
- Dudley County Borough Council coat-of-arms at Civic Heraldry
- Wren's Nest at bbc.co.uk
- [1] Derek J. Siveter, 1985 : The type species of Calymene (Trilobita) from the Silurian of Dudley, England
- Donald G. Mikulic & Joanne Kluessendorf, 2007: The legacy of the locust—Dudley and its famous trilobite Calymene blumenbachii. In: D. G. Mikulic, et al., editors. Fabulous Fossils, 300 years of worldwide research on trilobites. New York State Museum Bulletin 507, p. 141-170. http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/staffpubs/docs/16439.pdf
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