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Marissa Pitter, “Unearthing the Unknown: the Fossils of The 1 Unearthing the Unknown: The Fossils of the Budden Collection Marissa Pitter Fig. 1. South Gallery Room. Hinckley, Maine: L.C. Bates Museum. Photo: John Meader Photography, ©2020. In the South Gallery Room of the L.C. Bates Museum sit eight fossil display cases. In the cramped sixth case rests a significant fossil, the Pertica quadrifaria—Maine’s state fossil which comes from the rocks of the world-renowned Trout Valley Formation. Alongside the rare fossilized remains of Pertica lies “The Budden Collection,” a group of seven fossils found in northern Maine and donated to the museum in 2013. A label sits below each fossil identifying the name of the specimen (and at times, its genus and species), the geologic period and 2 formation, and the location where the fossil was found. The exact descriptions that the L.C. Bates Museum provides on the labels is given in Table 1. Table 1. The Budden Collection Fossils Fossil Geologic Period Geologic Formation Location Favositid Coral (1) Silurian Hardwood Mountain Hobbstown Township, Maine Favositid Coral (2) Silurian Hardwood Mountain Hobbstown Township, Maine Horn coral with trace Devonian Seboomook Tomhegan Township, fossils Maine Rugose Coral Ordovician/Silurian Formation Unknown Shin Pond, Maine Brachiopod Devonian Seboomook Tomhegan Township, Mucrospirifer? Maine Brachiopods likely Devonian Formation Unknown Big Moose Township, steinkerns (fossilized Maine outlines) Leptostrophia and Devonian likely Seboomook Big Moose Township, Tentaculites Maine The question mark following “Mucrospirifer,” the unknown geologic formations, and the impreciseness of the geologic age of the rugose coral indicate there are some uncertainties among the museum’s identifications. The table also points to some commonalities among the fossil collection. Besides the fact that all the fossils are from northern Maine, the Budden Collection is comprised of corals and brachiopods from either the Silurian or Devonian Periods. On the other side of the South Gallery Room is an enlarged, framed geologic time scale (fig. 2), listing Earth’s geological eras and periods, and noting major events. Maine’s fossil record dates back to the Paleozoic Era and contains rocks from the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian Periods, but the state’s geological history is complex (“Fossils”). This complexity is 3 situated within the bedrock pattern, produced by a cycle of geologic processes “including erosion and sedimentation, mountain-building, deformation (folding and faulting), metamorphism, and igneous activity” (Marvinney). These processes played a role in removing records of geological history, thus contributing to the over 300-million-year gap in Maine’s fossil record (“Fossils”). Similarly to the Budden Collection, there are some unknowns about Maine’s geology, but geologic investigations and field work conducted with the aim to produce new information should lead to a better understanding of the state’s bedrock. Relying on studies of Maine’s geology, this paper seeks to unearth what the geological history of Maine could imply about the unknowns in the L.C Bates Museum’s Budden Collection. Fig. 2. Diagram of the geologic history of Earth. Hinckley, Maine: L.C. Bates Museum. Photo: John Meader Photography, ©2020. 4 Fig. 3. Map of Earth’s tectonic plates during Late Ordovician Period. [Maine’s Fossil Record] Fig. 4. Map showing the modern location of plate fragments and inferred origin of Maine rocks. [Maine’s Fossil Record] In order to understand the landmass that we now call the State of Maine, focus must be geared towards how Earth’s tectonic plates evolved to assemble Maine’s bedrock foundation. Of importance to the formation of Maine’s bedrock is the collision and accretion of the microcontinent Avalonia to the continent of Laurentia (Dickson 26; fig. 3). Rocks that are now in 5 northern Maine were deposited along the southern coast of Laurentia during the Late Ordovician Period (fig. 4). By the Late Devonian Period, Laurentia and Avalonia collided, creating a range of mountains which included the rocks that were originally deposited during the Ordovician and Silurian Periods. The welding of Laurentia to Avalonia—along with other microcontinents, plate fragments, and volcanic arcs—created Laurussia, one of the major continents alongside Gondwana. Paleontologists believe that most of Maine’s fossils come from this period of the Devonian when there were two major continents (“Dinosaurs”). This deduction is based on the fact that by this geological period, the framework of Maine’s bedrock had been assembled. It also could serve as an explanation for why the majority of the fossils in the Budden Collection are from the Devonian Period. The Devonian Period in Maine was characterized by brachiopods. Of the thirty-eight deposits during this geologic time period, twenty-six were dominated by brachiopods (Dickson 288). Furthermore, one hundred and seventeen different brachiopod genera have been recorded from the Devonian (Dickson). Brachiopods are speciose fossils and their diversity can be acknowledged within museums based on the information a museum discloses through its labelling. Three of the four Devonian-age fossils within the Budden Collection are brachiopods, and two have labels recording their genera. On one label, the scientific name for the brachiopod Mucrospirifer (fig. 5) ends with a question mark, the notation indicating there is uncertainty regarding the organism’s genus (Dickson 45). Mucrospirifers are nicknamed “butterfly shells” due to its wide and winged-like appearance and are accompanied with a long hinge line that ends with mucronate points. Two Mucrospirifers found in Somerset County, Maine, possess a “transverse, triangular outline, about twice as broad as long” and a “sub-pyramidal shape”; 6 additional external details could not be described due to the specimens poor preservation (Boucot, “Earl Moose” 60). It is of interest whether the condition of the Mucrospirifer in the L.C. Bates Museum attributed to the uncertainty in its identification. Three fossils to the right of the Mucrospirifer sits another label that identifies the genera of two specimens contained in the same rock: Leptostrophia, a brachiopod, and Tentaculites, about which very little is known but which is usually classified as a type of mollusk. Unlike the Mucrospirifer, both genera are recorded on the label without the use of a question mark; however, the label also notes that the fossil is likely from the Seboomook Formation, indicating that the museum cannot definitively state what geologic formation these specimens came from. Data indicates that the Leptostrophia species, such as specimens of the Leptostrophia cf. L. magnifica, were often found in the Seboomook and Tarratine Formations (Kite and Kammer 103). The Tarratine Formation is said to be the shallow-water equivalent to the deep-water marine deposits of the Seboomook Formation, and brachiopods, like Leptostrophia, survived in both shallow water and deep water settings (Heath 30–31); therefore, it would be probable that the Leptostrophia species would occur among both formations. On the other hand, tentaculitoids—according to the genera that have been identified in Maine—seem to have existed mostly in shallow water deposits (Dickson 175). It would explain why Tentaculites were contained in the Devonian-aged rocks of the Tarratine Formation (Heath 29). Could these findings suggest that the Leptostrophia and Tentaculites fossil originated from the Tarratine instead of the Seboomook? 7 Fig. 5. Brachiopod Mucrospirifer? Hinckley, Maine: L.C. Bates Museum. [Staber] The Seboomook Formation has significant areal coverage in northern Maine. Three of the Budden Collection fossils are claimed to be from the Seboomook Formation. However, it should be noted that the majority of fossils recovered from this formation possibly did not form there. Boucot (“Stratigraphy” 170) claims that nearly all of the fossils he recovered in the Seboomook were about a mile away from the Tarratine Formation; the Tarratine and Seboomook Formations integrate with each other and species found in the Tarratine resemble those in the Seboomook (Kite and Kammer 103). Bearing this information in mind, questions may arise about whether the Budden Collection’s fossils from the Seboomook were once present in the Tarratine— particularly the brachiopod and horn coral with trace fossils that were both recovered in Tomhegan Township, which is in close proximity to the Tarratine. 8 Fig. 6. Horn coral with trace fossils. Hinckley, Maine: L.C. Bates Museum. [Staber] Fig. 7. Rugose Coral. Hinckley, Maine: L.C. Bates Museum. [Staber] Recall that three of the four Devonian-age fossils in the Budden Collection are brachiopods. The fourth fossil from this geologic age is the horn coral with trace fossils (fig. 6). Although brachiopods were dominant among Devonian-aged deposits, corals were common, as well, due 9 to the shallow water environments (Dickson 51). The Silurian Period was characterized by shallow marine settings that continued into the Devonian (Dickson 243). This environment may serve as one explanation for why the Budden’s horn coral is preserved from this time period. Another horn coral exists in the Budden Collection, but it is referred to as a rugose coral (fig. 7). According to Table 1, the rugose coral misses some identifying markers; the coral is assumed to be of either Ordovician or Silurian age and the geologic formation is unknown. Shallow water settings were scarce during the Ordovician Period and it is because of this scarcity that corals were uncommon during this time, with only 10 genera compared to 32 genera during the Silurian Period (Dickson 51). Shin Pond, Maine—where the L. C. Bates’s rugose coral came from—is known to preserve the best coral specimens (Dickson 288). The area is home to an unnamed conglomerate unit that contains a few scattered rugose corals among Early Silurian rocks (Neuman 16). The lack of shallow waters during the Ordovician and the number of rugose corals contained within the Silurian rocks of Shin Pond could suggest that the Budden’s rugose coral is of Silurian age.
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