Beautiful Gastropod & Brachiopod Plate

This is a beautiful association from the Waldron Shale of Indiana featuring two Platyostoma niagarense gastropods and many brachiopods of at least two different species. The plate is approximately 5x3 inches in the largest gastropod is about 1 1/2 inches wide. The plate was expertly prepared under microscope, a process that took quite a bit of time for a plate of this size and is a beautiful display.

Gastropods which are more commonly referred to as snails have been around since the Late Cambrian period. The class Gastropoda contains a vast total of named species, second only to the insects in overall number. There are 611 families of gastropods, of which 202 families are extinct and appear only in the fossil record.