Silurian Fish? from the Carnic Alps, NE Italy

OUTCROP POSITION AND GEOLOGICAL SKETCH

 The fossil was found on Tuesday 11  July 2000 in the Carnic Alps, NE Italy, not far from the Italian-Austrian border , along a mountain road in an outcrop exposed partly by the road-cutting and at greater extent by the
erosion of an Alpine creek ( Rio Malinfier; lit. 'Bad Hell's Creek ). The specimen was collected at about 1,5 m. above road-level, immediately beyond the bridge straddling the creek.


Fig. 1 (click to enlarge)

The outcrop, measuring ca. 300 x 20 mt., consists of stratified, tilted black shales with pyrite granules interspersed with calcitic lenses and veins of probable secondary formation and belongs to the Bischofalm Fm., dated Lower Silurian to Lower Devonian ( Llandovery to Lochkovian ) on the basis of varied Graptolite faunas collected in the XIX and XX century by Austrian and Italian palaeontologists on the very same spot. The Bischofalm Fm., together with the overlying Devonian carbonatic-shelf sediments, was involved in the folding related to the Hercynian orogeny. Neither this episode nor the Alpine orogeny affected the Silurian sediments with metamorphic overprinting.
 
 

SPECIMEN'S DESCRIPTION

The specimen, embedded in a thin black-shale platelet, has a light-grey colour, measures approximately 8.5x3.5cm. and has an overall semicircular shape with a medially positioned, slightly concave spoon-shaped structure bordered by a flat rim which is broader at the "rostral"  portion (Fig1). The interior of this elliptical structure is marked by at least two clearly discernible segmental arches whose curves are confluent with the internal sides of the rim . On both sides of the medial structure are symmetrically identical "wings" of flanges structurally identical with the "spoon". The lateral flanges are still embedded in the encasing sediment but the right flange is slightly more surfacing and shows a partially intact bordering margin (Fig 2). Tiny, interrupted lines are visible on the flanges and on the spoon-shaped central structure, particularly between the "rostral" portion of the bordering rim and the first arch.

Fig. 2 (Click to enlarge)



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