File:Mastigograptus pepper rock (Kope Formation, Upper Ordovician; Aurora West outrop, Dearborn County, Indiana, USA) 1.jpg

English: Mastigograptus sp. - fossil graptolites from the Ordovician of Indiana, USA.

This fossiliferous rock is from the famous Cincinnatian Series of the tristate area of Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana. Rocks in the Cincinnatian were deposited in relatively shallow marine facies during the Late Ordovician. The Cincinnatian succession is mostly interbedded limestones and shales. Most of the limestones are event beds (= tempestites), deposited during ancient storms.

The black spots and slender tubes seen here are graptolites, an extinct group of hemichordates that are usually preserved as carbonized compressions on bedding planes of fine-grained sedimentary rocks. They are typically not glamorous fossils, but they are critically important guide fossils and are widely used in biostratigraphy and for international correlation.

The most abundant group of graptolites in the fossil record is the graptoloids. Graptoloid graptolites typically resemble small hacksaw blades. Each “tooth” of the hacksaw blades housed a tentaculate, filter-feeding organism. The entire hacksaw blade is the graptolite skeleton, known as a rhabdosome - a nonmineralized colonial skeleton. Most graptolites were planktonic.

The second most abundant group of graptolites is the dendroids. Dendroid graptolites attached to substrates and had colonial skeletons (rhabdosomes) that are generally broadly branching (conical to fan-shaped to shrub-like to flat spirals).

Other graptolite groups are very rare: the crustoids, tuboids, camaroids, and stolonoids.

The fossils seen here are examples of Mastigograptus, an unusual group of graptolites assigned to the mastigograptides (see Bates & Urbanek, 2002). In the Cincinnatian, Mastigograptus remains are often fragmented and occur as scattered spots and narrow tubes - such occurrences are called "pepper rock".

Classification: Animalia, Hemichordata, Graptolithina, Mastigograptida, Mastigograptidae

Stratigraphy: Kope Formation, Edenian Stage, lower Cincinnatian Series, Upper Ordovician

Locality: Route 50 roadcut, ~1 mile west of the town of Aurora, southeastern Dearborn County, Indiana, USA

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Reference cited:

Bates & Urbanek (2002) - The ultrastructure, development, and systematic position of the graptolite genus Mastigograptus. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 47: 445-458.