The Virtual Petrified Wood Museum.  Dedicated to the Exhibition and Educational Study of Permineralized Plant Material
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Silurian Period: 443.7-416 Million Years Ago
New York


The Bertie Waterlime is a fossil lagerstatten that provides excellent examples of eurypterids and other rare arthropod fossils. Dolostones in the Bertie Group can be used to make cement that cures while under water, thus giving it the name waterlime. Fossils are collected from formations associated with the Bertie and Roundabout groups throughout New York and into Ontario, Canada. The Bertie Waterlime eurypterid containing dolostones represent a hypersaline lagoon. The majority of eurypterids found represent molts. Several species of eurypterids are found in these deposits. Eurypterus remipes is the state fossil for New York. A variety of marine life is preserved in the Bertie Waterlime dolostones. Primitive horseshoe crabs, aquatic scorpians, phyllocarid crustaceans, trilobite-like arthropods, gastropods, orthocone cephalopods, brachiopods, and stromatolites have been collected. A few examples of the land plant Cooksonia have also been recovered. A variety of eurypterid species have been found in deposits around the word representing a time span of 100 million years (Ordovician to Permian). One species of eurypterid reached a length of 2 meters, making it the largest known arthropod to have existed on Earth (Nudds & Selden, 2008, pp. 73-92).

Click on the pictures below to see our gallery.

Eurypterus remipes
Eurypterus remipes
Bibliography
Nudds J.R. & Selden P.A. (2008). Fossil Ecosystems of North America: A Guide to the Sites and Their Extraordinary Biotas. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

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