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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

The Orientation Of Strophomenid Brachiopods On Soft Substrates, Roy Plotnick, Benjamin Dattilo, Daniel Piquard, Jennifer Bauer, Joshua Corrie Jul 2014

The Orientation Of Strophomenid Brachiopods On Soft Substrates, Roy Plotnick, Benjamin Dattilo, Daniel Piquard, Jennifer Bauer, Joshua Corrie

Benjamin F. Dattilo

Strophomenid brachiopods have long been interpreted as ‘‘snowshoe’’ strategists, with their flattened concavoconvex valves providing resistance to foundering in very soft sediments. There has been a sharp difference of opinion in whether the shells were oriented with their convex or their concave surface in contact with the sediment. This study, along with independent evidence from sedimentology, ichnology, and morphology, indicates that the strophomenids lived with their shells concave down (convex up). Experiments indicate the force required to push shells into soft cohesive muds is much greater for the convex up than for the convex down orientation. Forces also increase with …


Recent Discoveries And A Review Of The Ordovician Faunas Of New Zealand, Ian Percival, Roger Cooper, Yong Yi Zhen, J Simes, Anthony Wright Apr 2014

Recent Discoveries And A Review Of The Ordovician Faunas Of New Zealand, Ian Percival, Roger Cooper, Yong Yi Zhen, J Simes, Anthony Wright

Anthony Wright

Fossiliferous Ordovician rocks are of limited extent in New Zealand, being largely restricted to northwest Nelson and Westland in the northern part of the South Island, with some isolated exposures at the southern extremity of Fiordland (Fig. 1). The known stratigraphic record, though incomplete, covers much of the period, and new information from study and revision of old collections (mostly dating from the 1960s and 1970s) continues to fill in the gaps. These data are critical to a better understanding of New Zealand’s place in the Ordovician world, when it occupied an isolated position facing the palaeo-Pacific Ocean offshore to …