Historic Fossils from the Mace Brown Museum
Today I visited the Mace Brown Museum. When you first walk in you are surrounded by historic creatures that have now been extinct for over millions of years. Armored fishes existed approximately 492-369 million years ago. There are two types of armored fishes, the ostracoderms and placoderms. Ostracoderms means “shelled-skin” and were found in early Devonian-age freshwater deposits in Europe. Placoderm means “plated skin” and were mostly found in freshwater deposits, but sometimes found in marine deposits. Placoderms had articulated armor plates that covered their head and thorax. The Dunkleosteus was the largest and fiercest of the placoderms. They reached lengths of 33 feet and weighed up to four tons. They were the top carnivores of their time. Dunkleosteus did not have teeth, instead they had two pairs of razor sharp bony plates, similar looking to a snapping turtle. The two gnathal plates sharpened themselves as they rubbed one another and grew continually ...