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Pyritized Tube Feet In A Protasterid Ophiuroid From The Upper Ordovician Of Kentucky, U.S.A., Alexander Glass
Pyritized Tube Feet In A Protasterid Ophiuroid From The Upper Ordovician Of Kentucky, U.S.A., Alexander Glass
All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences
A single specimen of the protasterid ophiuroid Protasterina flexuosa from the Kope Formation (Cincinnatian, Upper Ordovician) of Kentucky exhibits three−dimensionally pyritized tube feet. This represents the first report of soft−tissue preservation in an echinoderm from the type−Cincinnatian series. The tube feet are solid and lack all internal structure. They consist of aggregated masses of small euhedral to subhedral pyrite crystals suggesting that pyritization, although decay−induced and mediated, did not necessarily replicate soft−tissues but might instead have formed inside the void−spaces left behind during the decay process. The discovery of pyritized soft−tissue as delicate as ophiuroid tube feet suggests that similar …