The carpoid fossil found by James Hanna. Provided photo
The Buffalo News has a story about a rare find at the Penn Dixie Fossil Park & Nature Reserve in Blasdell, NY, which is near Buffalo in western New York. Carpoids were found while splitting the Devonian shale in the park. Carpoids are rarely found in fossil deposits. They are distant relatives of starfish, sea urchins, and sand dollars.
The 54-acre Penn Dixie Fossil Park in Hamburg is the site of a former quarry filled with fossils from the Devonian Period, nearly 400 million years ago.
Carpoids had been thought to be extinct 25 million years before the Devonian Period, and have been found in only a handful of locations around the world, Stokes said. The Penn Dixie fossils are roughly 382 million years old, according to Stokes.
The carpoids are considered a “Lazarus taxon,” an animal that disappears from the fossil record and reappears much later, Stokes said.
“It’s just amazing when something like this shows up,” said Carlton E. Brett, distinguished research professor at the University of Cincinnati. “We know then that group had to be around all that time in between, but it’s not seen anywhere else in world.”
