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Ordovician fish spines from Girvan, Scotland

Abstract

THE Upper Ordovician Lady Burn Starfish Beds1 of the Drummuck Group2 in the Craighead inlier have long been known for their well-preserved, diverse and abundant invertebrate faunas3,4. The trilobite5 and brachiopod (D.A.T.H., unpublished data) faunas indicate a late Rawtheyan (Ashgill) age for these predominantly green medium grained sandstone beds. Moreover, a study of the brachiopod associations and sediments of these beds together with the rocks above and below suggests that, although the Starfish Beds contain essentially ‘shelf’ faunas, final deposition was in a relatively deep-water, proximal slope environment6. I present here geochemical and morphological evidence of fish spines from these deep-water, siliciclastic marine rocks of Ordovician age at Girvan, southwest Scotland.

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HARPER, D. Ordovician fish spines from Girvan, Scotland. Nature 278, 634–635 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1038/278634a0

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