Id This Insect Wing In Pa Period Shale

[usaman65]

ID this insect wing in PA period shale. from carbon county, PA, 300 million years old.

http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd73/us...65/amber013.jpg

thanks in advance

kev

[ebrocklds]

kevin, i am not sure that it is an insect wing. generally carboniferous insects have wings like dragonflies. (not always)

i would expect to see branching and some cross veination if it were a wing. also a scale would help. please post a few more pictures with different lighting. that will help us to id it better.

for now i will stick with plant material for my answer.

Brock

[ashcraft]

I agree, not physically constructed like a wing, but better lighting and more magnification would help.

Brent Ashcraft

[Guest solius symbiosus]

It kind of looks like a cordaites.

[Guest Nicholas]

Looks almost like a flower petal, or some other piece of vegetation to me. Just my guess. It is interesting.

[MOROPUS]

it doesn`t look like an insect wing;the patterns in it are different from those from bugs.By the way, I found in a book a very close description of your "wing".It is a fern leave, from the Sphenophyllum family.Look it in internet or in a book.It is very similar!!!!

[ebrocklds]

Looks almost like a flower petal, or some other piece of vegetation to me. Just my guess. It is interesting.

nicholas,

even though it looks to be a flower petal it is highly unlikely. angiosperms had not yet evolved. it was only about 130 m.y.a. that they came into existense. i have made the same mistake with a few carboniferous plants myself. i learned quickly once a paleobotanist friend of mine made me feel really stupid when i asked him if it was a flower. i should have known better to have asked him without doing my own research first.

Brock

[Guest Nicholas]

nicholas,

even though it looks to be a flower petal it is highly unlikely. angiosperms had not yet evolved. it was only about 130 m.y.a. that they came into existense. i have made the same mistake with a few carboniferous plants myself. i learned quickly once a paleobotanist friend of mine made me feel really stupid when i asked him if it was a flower. i should have known better to have asked him without doing my own research first.

Brock

Thanks for the clarification Brock. The time period didn't even come across my mind, perhaps more research on my part is in order. I'm still going with some sort of vegetation given the information and the vein structures in the piece. Fern would be the most educated guess.

[Guest solius symbiosus]

I don't think it is a fern. Probably, as Moropus wrote, it is an equiset, or a cordaite. Did you notice calamites in the same outcrop?

[usaman65]

Thanks for the clarification Brock. The time period didn't even come across my mind, perhaps more research on my part is in order. I'm still going with some sort of vegetation given the information and the vein structures in the piece. Fern would be the most educated guess.

yes but i dissagree, it is very small and the pic had to be taked under a 30x microscope.

kev

[kauffy]

keep in mind plants are small too

[usaman65]

yes but calamites from this outcrop are 2-3' long, mostly every plant is over a few inches at this site

[MOROPUS]

yes but calamites from this outcrop are 2-3' long, mostly every plant is over a few inches at this site

Yes, but you miss that most of plants, grow from a tiny seed (or in this case,spores),and in their early growing stages are small!

And there are small plants in the shade of big ones, just like nowadays! The thing is that they are difficult to preserve, so that is why you always find big leaves!