This is the "Fossil Friday" post #248. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to [email protected]. Please include a short description or story. Check the hash tag #FossilFriday on Twitter/X and Bluesky for contributions from around the world!
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Today, we have a triple clam-clam from Chowder Flats. Chowder Flats was a popular Mazon Creek fossil collecting site in Morris, IL. Unfortunately, there isn't much available about the Chowder Flats locality. It's name comes from the abundance of clam fossils found at the site. The area was a series of coal mines in operation from the 1870s until the 1920s. It's now a housing development. In the map above, the dots in the far upper left are Chowder Flats.
We had a couple posts about the locality... see Mazon Monday #84 and Throwback Thursday #187 for photos from an ESCONI field trip. Mazonomya mazonensis or "clam-clam", as the old timers called them, could be collected in great quantities at Chowder Flats. Mazonomya mazonensis was incorrectly identified as Edmondia a long time ago. It was redescribed by Jack Bowman Bailey of Western Illinois University in 2011. See "Paleobiology, Paleoecology, and Systematics of Solemyidae (Mollusca: Bivalvia: Protobranchia) from the Mazon Creek Lagerstätte, Pennsylvanian of Illinois" in Bulletins of American Paleontology for reference. Mazon Monday #25 also provides information about M. mazonensis.
This particular triple specimen was collected by Kathy Dedina, who was president of ESCONI in the mid-1990s.
