The BAPG presents...

169-7 Phosphatized Eurypterid Muscles from the Williamsville Formation (Silurian Bertie Group; New York)

Come join us to hear about WNY's first eurypterid fossil to have preserved phosphatized muscles!

Speaker: SUNY Fredonia Professor Thomas Hegna

1.0 PDH pending

Authors

Hegna, Thomas Arthur1, Bicknell, Russell D. C.2r> (1) Department of Geology and Environmental Sciences, SUNY Fredonia, Fredonia, NY, USA, (2) College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, Bedford Park, South Australia, Australia.

Abstract

Phosphatized muscle tissue was first identified in fossil fish in 1888 by Otto Reis. In the nearly 150 years since, phosphatized muscle tissue has been identified in a number of other fossil organisms. Fossil eurypterids, however, have never been observed to have phosphatized muscles—the only examples of fossil eurypterid muscles are preserved in pyrite and clays.

We report here on the first eurypterid with phosphatized muscles from the Williamsville Formation in the Buffalo area of New York State. The specimen, belonging to the species Eurypterus dekayi, displays clear phosphatized muscle fibers in the basal podomeres of limb VI. Structureless phosphatic deposits are also found near the base of limbs II-V, interpreted to represent the location of coxal muscles. EDS analyses not only confirmed the calcium phosphate composition, but also revealed ‘shadows’ in the silicon map that may correspond to the position of limbs II-V. Though the phosphatization pathway is fairly well understood, the cause of the silica shadows is not yet known.

Bio

Dr. Thomas Hegna grew up in western Iowa and attended the University of Iowa where he fell in love with invertebrate paleontology. He graduated in the spring of 2004 with honors and high distinction in Geoscience (B.S.) with minors in English and Philosophy. Dr. Hegna stayed at the University of Iowa for his M.S., graduating in the fall of 2006 after completing a project on the systematics and phylogeny of a fauna of upper Cambrian trilobites. He then moved on to Yale University where he completed his thesis on branchiopod crustacean phylogeny and their fossil record in the spring of 2012. He taught at Western Illinois University from the fall of 2011 to the spring of 2019. In 2016, he was awarded the WIU Provost’s Excellence Award for Teaching with Technology.

During the summer of 2019, he moved to Fredonia to teach in the Geology & Environmental Sciences Department at SUNY Fredonia. In the spring of 2022, he was awarded the William T. and Charlotte N. Hagen Young Scholar/Artist award at SUNY Fredonia

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